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BOOKS  BY  EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 

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ECONOMICS 

THE  PRACTICE  OF  CHARITY 

PRINCIPLES  OF  RELIEF 

EFFICIENCY  AND  RELIEF 

MISERY  AND  ITS  CAUSES 

Standard  Library  Edition 

SOCIAL  FORCES 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  WORK 
THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

May  be  obtained  through 
Survey  Associates,  Incorporated 
105  east  22d  street,  new  york 

THE  NORMAL  LIFE 


EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 


SURVEY  ASSOCIATES,  INC. 

NEW  YORK 

1915 


Copyright.  1915.  by 
EDWARD  T.  DEV1NE 


PRESS   OF   WM.    F.   FELL   CO. 
PHILADELPHIA 


LIBRARY 


tl  M  SANTA  BARBARA 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Note 2 

Introduction 3 

I.  Infancy 13 

II.  Childhood 43 

III.  Youth 75 

IV.  Maturity:  Work 115 

V.  Maturity:  Home 153 

VI.  Late  Maturity  and  Old  Age 193 

Appendix:  Suggestive  Questions 223 

Index 229 


NOTE 

This  volume  contains  the  substance  of  a  course 
of  lectures  delivered  in  Baltimore  in  February  and 
March,  191 5,  under  the  auspices  of  The  Social 
Service  Corporation.  The  course  is  the  first 
of  a  series  planned  for  successive  years  on  the 
general  theme  of  Social  Construction. 

Except  when  obviously  inappropriate,  the  direct 
form  of  address  has  been  retained,  as  well  as  refer- 
ences to  local  conditions  by  way  of  illustration. 

My  colleague,  Miss  Brandt,  has  shared  in  the 
preparation  of  the  lectures  and  of  the  volume  for 
publication.  E.  T.  D. 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION 

The  general  theme  of  the  series  of  lectures  intro- 
duced by  this  course  is  Social  Construction.  I 
accept  the  faith  which  the  phrase  implies:  the 
faith  that  we  build  the  social  structure;  that  it  is 
not  external  or  mechanical,  but  human,  spiritual, 
influenced  by  our  ideals,  shaped  by  our  actions. 
Pragmatist  or  meliorist,  we  who  preach  social  con- 
struction must  insist  on  the  fruitfulness  of  human 
effort  directed  toward  social  betterment.  We 
cannot  be  pessimists,  wringing  our  hands  because 
progress  is  impossible;  nor  yet  optimists,  with  idle 
or  mischievous  hands  because  progress  is  inevitable. 
Our  faith,  rather,  with  that  of  William  James,  is 
that  progress  is  possible,  but  not  inevitable;  that 
it  is  dependent  upon  our  efforts.  We  are  the  archi- 
tects and  builders  of  our  own  well-being  and  that 
of  our  posterity. 

For  this  introduction  to  the  series  it  has  seemed 
to  me  appropriate  that  we  should  attempt — not  a 
brilliant  presentment  of  existing  evils  (we  know 
what  they  are)  and  not  a  thrilling  appeal  to  you  to 
do  something  about  them  (the  need  for  that  is  past 
in  this  community),  but  rather  a  comprehensive 

5 


6  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

outline  picture,  a  sober,  unimpassioned,  matter-of- 
fact  interpretation  of  social  plans  and  movements, 
from  which  we  may  see  things  in  perspective,  by 
means  of  which  we  may  realize  how  little  we  have 
done  as  yet  about  some  things,  how  few  are  the 
consecrated  workers,  how  limited  our  vision,  how 
inadequate  our  practical  application  of  that  ad- 
mirable principle  of  cooperation  so  constantly  on 
our  lips,  how  provincial  and  fragmentary  all  our 
philanthropy,  even  the  best  of  it,  how  unworthy  to 
be  called  either  charity  or  justice,  if  by  those  noble 
words  we  mean  what  our  fathers  meant,  or  what 
our  sons  will  mean  by  those  or  better  terms  de- 
scribing the  better  human  relations  which  are  to  be. 

There  are  several  possible  plans  on  which  such  a 
survey  as  this  might  be  made.  We  might  con- 
sider the  duties  of  society  with  respect  to  the  moral, 
the  mental,  and  the  physical  needs  of  man.  We 
might  select  the  more  pressing  of  our  social  prob- 
lems (poverty,  sickness,  inefficiency,  crime,  irregu- 
lar employment)  and  examine  the  remedies  that 
have  been  advocated  for  them.  Or  we  might  study 
historically  the  forms  of  social  work  which  have 
been  devised  by  various  peoples  at  different  times, 
tracing  their  development,  examining  the  principles 
on  which  they  are  based,  and  seeking  to  discover 
what  lessons  they  have  for  us  in  the  United  States 
in  the  twentieth  century. 

Any  of  these  plans  would  yield  profitable  results. 
I  have  chosen,  however,  another  method  of  ap- 


INTRODUCTION  7 

proach,  hoping  that  we  may  get  both  unity  and  pro- 
portion into  our  study,  and  perhaps  see  some  old 
problems  in  a  new  light,  if  we  take  for  our  background 
the  normal  individual  life,  and,  following  it  through 
from  beginning  to  end,  try  to  determine  what  are 
the  social  conditions  and  social  provisions  which  are 
essential  at  each  stage  to  securing  it. 

On  this  plan  we  shall  interest  ourselves  in  the 
positive  rather  than  the  negative  aspect  of  life,  in 
normal  development  rather  than  pathological  aber- 
rations, in  healthy  participation  in  organized  human 
activities  rather  than  in  waste,  pauperism,  crim- 
inality, and  degeneracy.  We  shall  never  be  very 
far  from  the  abnormal  and  the  subnormal,  never 
quite  free  from  the  consciousness  of  that  incessant 
warfare  between  beneficent  germs  and  pathogenic 
germs  of  which  the  human  body  is  the  choicest 
battle  field,  and  which  has  its  analogy  in  spiritual 
struggle;  never  able  to  forget  that  a  normal  life 
is  vouchsafed  to  any  of  us  only  as  an  ideal. 

We  shall  never  find  ourselves  in  that  home  of  the 
ideal,  of  which  Bernard  Shaw  writes  so  eloquently,* 
where  we  escape  the  tyranny  of  the  flesh;  where 
there  are  no  social  questions,  no  political  questions, 
no  religious  questions — best  of  all,  perhaps,  no 
sanitary  questions;  where  we  call  our  appearance 
beauty,  our  emotions  love,  our  sentiments  heroism, 
our  aspirations  virtue,  just  as  we  did  on  earth; 
but  where  there  are  no  hard  facts  to  contradict  us, 
*  Man  and  Superman. 


8  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

no  ironic  contrast  of  needs  with  pretensions,  no 
human  comedy,  nothing  but  a  perpetual  romance. 
To  be  sure,  the  other  name  of  this  idyllic  paradise 
is  hell.  It  is  a  universal  melodrama,  a  home  of 
delusion ;  and  we  humans,  if  we  analyze  our  deep- 
est preferences,  will  not  wish  to  be  translated  pre- 
maturely from  this  normal,  incomplete,  but  de- 
veloping life  to  one  of  universal  melodrama  and 
perpetual  romance. 

The  normal  life  rather  than  abnormalities,  pros- 
perity rather  than  misery,  health  rather  than  dis- 
ease, will  furnish  the  framework  of  our  discussion. 

"The  normal  life  of  man"  suggests  a  fairly  defi- 
nite picture,  the  same  in  its  essentials  however  much 
it  may  vary  as  to  details. 

We  think  of  a  child  born,  without  congenital 
defects,  into  a  home  where  it  has  been  lovingly 
expected  and  prepared  for.  We  see  it  carefully,  if 
not  always  scientifically,  tended  through  its  first 
delicate  years,  weathering  various  minor  ailments 
and  "children's  diseases,"  though  probably  with 
one  or  more  narrow  escapes,  learning  its  first  lessons 
in  self-control,  getting  its  fundamental  ideas  of 
material  things  and  of  human  relations — in  short, 
entering  into  its  "social  heritage."  Next  comes  a 
happy  period  made  up  of  school  and  play  and  home 
life,  some  acquaintance  with  racial  traditions  of 
religion  and  morality,  and  more  or  less  acquaintance, 
through  travel  and  otherwise,  with  the  outside 
world.     We  think  of  the  family  circle  as  including 


INTRODUCTION  9 

the  child's  father  and  mother,  one  or  two  or  three 
brothers  and  sisters,  a  grandmother,  at  least,  to 
represent  the  older  generation,  and  some  uncles  and 
aunts  and  cousins  to  form  an  intermediate  link 
between  the  home  and  the  mysterious  world. 

Childhood  past, — whether  at  fourteen  or  sixteen 
or  twelve  or  ten, — there  follows  a  period  of  prepara- 
tion for  the  responsibilities  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood, and  this  is  the  point  where  there  will  probably 
be  the  greatest  varieties  among  our  mental  pictures 
of  a  normal  life.  To  some  it  means  a  broad  general 
education,  followed  by  professional  training,  with  a 
year  or  two  in  Europe  and  long  summers  of  recre- 
ation, bringing  the  young  woman  to  the  age  of 
twenty-three  or  four  or  five,  and  the  young  man  to 
perhaps  twenty-seven  or  eight.  For  others  it 
represents  a  high  school  and  normal  course  for  the 
girl,  and  a  high  school  course  followed  by  induction 
into  "business"  or  a  skilled  trade  for  the  boy;  for 
others  still  a  brief  and  superficial  commercial  or 
industrial  training  at  the  end  of  grammar  school. 
Even  among  those  whose  children  go  to  work,  at 
any  kind  of  job  they  can  get,  as  soon  as  the  law 
allows,  few  would  be  found  to  defend  the  practice. 
A  high  school  education  or  its  equivalent,  with 
some  sort  of  vocational  training, — agricultural, 
industrial,  commercial,  or  professional, — is  fast 
coming  to  be  part  of  the  American  standard  of 
living. 

Arrived  at  maturity,  equipped  to  earn  a  living  and 


10  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

to  spend  it,  we  picture  the  young  man  and  woman 
marrying,  surrounding  their  children  with  rather 
more  comforts  and  advantages  than  they  them- 
selves had,  giving  them  a  longer  period  for  educa- 
tion. We  think  of  them  as  living  to  see  their  chil- 
dren established  in  homes  of  their  own,  and  their 
grandchildren  growing  up;  gradually  relinquishing 
active  duties  to  the  younger  generation,  while  keep- 
ing lively  interests  and  a  place  of  usefulness ;  their 
support  provided  either  by  savings  or  by  their 
children's  care,  and  at  the  end  leaving  the  world, — 
reluctantly,  to  be  sure,  for  it  has  been  an  agree- 
able place, — but  with  a  sense  of  satisfaction,  as  at 
the  close  of  a  full  day  of  work  and  wholesome  pleas- 
ure and  friendly  intercourse. 

There  is  no  place  in  the  picture  for  blind  babies, 
feeble-minded  girls,  syphilitic  young  men,  neglected 
orphans,  child  workers,  ignorant  and  inefficient 
men  and  women,  repulsive  and  lonely  old  people; 
there  is  no  place  for  dependence  on  charity,  for 
long  disabling  illness  or  accident,  for  prostitution, 
drunkenness,  vice,  or  habitual  crime,  for  neglect  of 
children  or  other  disregard  of  natural  obligations, 
for  premature  age  or  early  death. 

These  things  all  exist, — we  are  not  in  heaven, — 
and  we  all  know  that  they  exist, — we  are  not  in 
hell, — but  they  do  not  occur  to  us,  even  to  those  of 
us  who  are  most  familiar  with  them,  when  we  are 
thinking  of  the  normal  course  of  an  individual's  life 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.     They  are  abnormali- 


INTRODUCTION  11 

ties.  They  are  things  which  interfere  with  the 
realization  by  every  individual  of  a  normal  life. 
They  are  obstacles  that  we  shall  have  to  reckon 
with  in  considering  by  what  means  the  normal  life, 
at  each  stage  of  the  individual's  development,  may 
be  assured. 


I 

INFANCY 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  LIFE 
The  normal  life  of  man  falls  obviously  into  seven 
natural  divisions:  before  birth,  infancy,  childhood, 
adolescence,  early  maturity,  full  maturity,  and  old 
age.  It  is  the  poet's  number,  but  not  precisely  his 
boundaries,  for  we  are  concerned  less  with  those 
external  signs  of  man's  development  which  Shakes- 
peare mentions,  such  as  his  indigestion,  his  school 
books,  his  oaths,  his  sword,  and  his  cane,  and  more 
with  his  essential  functions  and  the  peculiar  prob- 
lems which  his  progress  through  the  course  of  life 
presents.  And  so  we  discover  the  child  not  in  the 
nurse's  arms,  but  at  the  moment  of  annunciation, 
when  the  young  wife  hears  a  welcome  salutation : 

Hail,  highly  favored,  blessed  art  thou  among 
women.     Fear  not. 

And  she  is  ready  to  answer: 

Behold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord.     Be  it 
unto  me  according  to  thy  word. 

Every  woman,  in  the  sacred  hour  when  she  knows 
that  she  has  become  the  lawful  custodian  of  a  new 
life,  a  life  for  whom  all  things  on  earth,  aye  and  in 
heaven  and  in  hell,  are  possible,  may  well  feel,  as 
Mary  of  Nazareth  felt  before  her  cousin  Elizabeth, 

15 


16  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

a  magnificent  exaltation,  not  unmingled  with  deep 
humility.  This  child  which  is  to  be  born,  it  may 
be  in  a  cramped  tenement,  in  the  alley,  in  the  alms- 
house, even  in  the  stable,  shall  also  be  the  son  of  the 
Most  High. 

He  hath  regarded  the  low  estate  of  his 
handmaiden  .  .  .  From  henceforth  all 
generations  shall  call  me  blessed.  His  mercy 
is  for  them  that  fear  him  from  generation  to 
generation.  He  hath  put  down  the  mighty 
from  their  seats  and  exalted  them  of  low  degree. 
He  hath  scattered  the  proud  in  the  imagination 
of  their  hearts.  He  hath  filled  the  hungry 
with  good  things:  and  the  rich  he  hath  sent 
empty  away. 

No  one  else  is  so  sublimely  sure  of  the  truth  of 
these  strange  sayings  as  the  expectant  mother. 
The  hope  of  ultimate  justice  and  good  will  among 
men  rests  upon  the  constantly  repeated  miracle 
of  the  creation  of  new  lives.  If  the  passing  genera- 
tion of  men  could  to-day  be  conceived  as  locked  in 
a  life  and  death  struggle  with  the  forces  of  bar- 
barism, without  the  reinforcements  for  which  we 
are  accustomed  to  look  to  the  coming  generation, 
who  would  dare  be  an  optimist?  Every  mother 
has  a  right  to  feel  that  none  can  set  bounds  to  the 
promise  of  her  unborn  child.  The  proud,  the 
mighty,  or  the  rich,  who  in  their  wealth,  their 
might,  and  their  pride  think  otherwise  have  to 
reckon  with  two  things  beyond  their  power,  stronger 


INFANCY  17 

than  their  pride,  not  to  be  touched  by  their  wealth : 
the  unexplored  potentialities  of  a  new  life,  and 
the  unbounded  faith  inherent  in  a  mother's  love. 

To  insure  a  fair  start  in  life  for  the  individual — a 
normal  beginning  of  the  normal  life — reliance  must 
be  placed  chiefly  on  the  individual  and  the  family. 
Society  may,  to  a  limited  extent,  by  conscious  effort, 
determine  what  kind  of  children  shall  be  born,  and 
what  kind  of  care  they  shall  receive  after  birth, 
but  in  the  main  the  important  services  of  society 
at  this  stage  are  indirect  and  advisory:  the  pro- 
vision of  such  education  as  will  make  individuals 
lead  clean  and  wholesome  lives  and  act  wisely, 
when  the  time  comes,  about  marriage  and  parent- 
hood; of  such  industrial  and  social  conditions  as 
will  make  it  possible  for  women  to  bear  healthy 
children  without  exhaustion;  and  of  such  assis- 
tance, chiefly  in  the  way  of  advice,  as  will  enable 
them  to  care  intelligently  for  their  babies  after 
they  are  born.  The  selection  of  parents  for  the 
next  generation  is  at  present  in  America,  and  is 
likely  to  continue  to  be,  left  to  individual  choice; 
and  the  only  satisfactory  method  that  has  yet  been 
found  for  getting  babies  safely  through  the  first 
year  of  life  is  the  strictly  individualistic  plan  of 
attention  to  each  one  by  its  own  mother. 

PARENTAGE 
There  are  three  distinct  sets  of  problems  involved 
in  this  one  of  a  normal  beginning  of  life,  according 


18  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

as  they  center  about  (i)  parentage,  (2)  the  period 
before  birth,  and  (3)  the  life  of  the  infant  in  the 
first  year  or  two  after  birth. 

Heredity  is  a  fact  of  human  life  of  which  not 
merely  the  individual  in  his  private  relations,  but 
the  community  in  its  broader  social  relations,  must 
take  account.  Normally  like  tends  to  beget  like. 
It  is  sound  human  policy  to  prevent  the  conception 
of  human  beings  who  are  to  be  cursed  from  the  very 
origin  of  life  with  an  irremediable  handicap.  There 
is  a  blight  on  the  blessing  in  the  motherhood  of  an 
imbecile  child.  There  is  no  inalienable  right  to  be 
the  father  of  tainted,  diseased,  degenerate  off- 
spring. As  to  the  early  steps  in  this  particular 
policy  of  social  construction,  the  evidence  is  all  in. 
Modern  science  has  demonstrated  that  no  feeble- 
minded mother,  no  syphilitic  mother,  no  alcoholic 
mother,  and  no  mother  of  a  child  whose  father  is 
alcoholic,  feeble-minded,  or  syphilitic,  may  expect 
to  give  birth  to  a  normal  child.  We  cannot  say 
that  it  never  occurs.  In  the  old  polytheistic  days 
a  human  mother  sometimes  gave  birth  to  a  divinity, 
and  there  are  about  equal  chances  of  a  similar  mir- 
acle in  the  bringing  forth  of  health  from  degeneracy. 

The  first  step  then  is  clear.  Those  who  are 
demonstrably  unfit  for  parentage — the  imbecile, 
the  incurably  insane,  the  epileptic,  and  those  who 
suffer  from  such  diseases  as  directly  afflict  off- 
spring— should  be  firmly  and  consistently  con- 
trolled.    So  far  as  defectives  and  incurables  are 


INFANCY  19 

concerned,  this  should  be  done  preferably  in  cus- 
todial institutions,  humanely  conducted  colonies, 
where  the  capacities  of  the  patients  may  be  exer- 
cised for  their  own  good  and  that  of  their  com- 
panions; but  if  not  in  such  institutions,  then  in 
some  other  way,  by  adequate  home  supervision 
when  there  are  sufficient  resources  for  it  and  suffi- 
cient guarantee  that  it  will  be  exercised,  by  surgi- 
cal operation  in  suitable  cases,  though  conserva- 
tives on  this  subject  would  prefer  that  such  opera- 
tions should  be  performed,  for  the  present,  not  as  a 
result  of  specific  legislation,  but,  like  other  medical 
and  surgical  treatment,  only  when  the  health  of  the 
patient  also  justifies  it  and  then  on  the  professional 
responsibility  of  the  physician  in  charge. 

To  eliminate  the  ravages  of  the  venereal  dis- 
eases it  is  necessary  that  they  be  brought  under 
public  control  by  means  of  the  program  which  has 
been  tested  with  respect  to  other  infectious  dis- 
eases: compulsory  notification  to  the  Board  of 
Health  of  all  affected  persons  known  to  institutions 
and  to  private  physicians;  free  laboratory  assist- 
ance in  making  Wassermann  tests  and  other  aids 
to  diagnosis;  a  very  considerable  increase  in  pro- 
vision for  treatment,  both  in  hospitals  and  in  clin- 
ics; popular  education  about  the  consequences  of 
these  diseases  to  wife — or  husband — and  child, 
about  their  long  and  insidious  course,  and  the  treat- 
ment essential  to  cure. 

That  unfit  marriages  should  be  prevented,  and 


20  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

also  such  illegitimate  births  as  would  be  barred  by 
the  same  standard,  is  the  foundation-stone  of  social 
control.  That  is  only  the  beginning,  but  perhaps 
it  may  be  also  the  end,  of  compulsion  in  the  regu- 
lation of  marriages  and  births.  For  the  state  is 
but  one  among  many  agencies  of  social  action. 
There  are  many  things  that  can  be  done  through 
the  voluntary  principle.  The  responsibility  for 
wise  mating,  for  improvement  of  the  racial  stock 
through  judicious  marriage,  would  better  remain 
where  it  is  for  the  present — on  the  parties  to  the 
marriage  contract,  their  parents,  their  spiritual 
advisers,  and  their  matchmaking  friends.  Educa- 
tion is  needed;  improved  facilities  in  parks  and 
parlors  for  legitimate  courtship  are  needed;  more 
rational  standards  of  living,  in  which  substantial 
values  and  genuine  necessities  receive  more  em- 
phasis and  artificial  luxuries  less;  but  all  these 
things  are  to  be  secured  through  discussion,  through 
the  survival  of  sensible  ideas,  through  the  con- 
tagion of  high  ideals,  rather  than  by  any  form  of 
coercion.  A  social  program  does  not  necessarily 
mean  a  program  of  legislation. 

If  we  build  suitable  institutions  for  the  mentally 
defective,  with  enough  room  in  them  for  all  who 
cannot  safely  be  left  at  large — not  necessarily  ex- 
pensive institutions,  but  safe,  clean,  equipped  with 
all  appropriate  means  for  providing  employment, 
education,  recreation,  and  considerate  care;  and 
if  we  provide  adequately  for  the  maintenance  of 


INFANCY  21 

these  institutions,  we  shall  be  doing  our  first  large 
duty.  Commitment  to  such  institutions  should 
be  compulsory,  if  necessary,  though  there  is  ad- 
vantage in  having  also  institutions  to  which  access 
is  voluntary,  and  the  guardianship  should  last  as 
long  as  the  condition  lasts,  that  is,  ordinarily,  for 
life.  The  establishment  and  adequate  maintenance 
and  actual  use  of  such  colonies  for  the  feeble- 
minded would  actually  eliminate  enough  prostitu- 
tion, intemperance,  pauperism,  crime,  and  disease 
to  pay  for  their  cost  probably  many  times  over. 
But  the  financial  argument  is  subordinate  to  the 
argument  from  social  construction:  it  would  cut 
out  just  so  many  weak  spots  in  our  social  founda- 
tions; it  would  put  an  end  to  an  appalling  amount 
of  actual  misery,  actual  loss  of  life  and  property, 
actual  failure,  suffering,  and  disgrace. 

Closely  connected  with  this  subject  is  the  prob- 
lem of  illegitimacy.  It  is  desirable  that  children 
shall  be  born  in  wedlock.  The  illegitimate  child 
has  less  chance  than  others  to  be  born  alive;  it 
has  only  about  half  the  chances  of  living  through 
its  first  year;  and  in  other  ways,  too  well  known 
to  need  mention,  it  is  handicapped  from  the  outset. 
The  point  at  which  to  prevent  illegitimate  births 
is  in  the  home  and  at  school,  long  before  they  would 
occur,  by  the  development  of  the  will  of  the  strong 
and  by  the  protection  of  the  person  of  the  weak. 
Guarding  the  mentally  defective  in  the  way  we  have 
just  been  considering  would  do  more  than  any  other 


22  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

single  measure,  cutting  out  at  once  a  very  consider- 
able proportion.  Something  in  the  way  of  deter- 
rence can  be  accomplished  by  prosecution  when  the 
girl  is  under  the  age  of  consent,  and  by  fastening 
responsibility  for  the  child  on  its  father,  whether 
married  or  not;  but  these  proceedings  are  effective 
only  in  so  far  as  they  have  the  sympathy  of  public 
opinion  as  represented  by  juries  and  courts.  The 
repeal  of  all  so-called  bastardy  laws  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  a  simple  and  humane  process  by  which 
an  unmarried  mother  may,  without  any  such  stigma 
on  her  unborn  child,  secure  from  its  father  the 
means  of  its  support  and  of  care  in  her  own  con- 
finement, would  be  a  very  desirable  reform.  Some- 
thing can  be  done,  also,  to  influence  the  girl  at  this 
time  and  prevent  a  recurrence  of  her  misfortune, 
and  by  far  the  greatest  hope  lies  in  conscious  efforts 
to  shield  young  girls  and  young  men  from  extra- 
ordinary temptations. 

So  much  the  law  and  organized  social  work  can 
do,  but  mainly  the  purification  of  parenthood,  the 
social  insurance  of  a  wholesome  birth,  depends 
upon  the  individual.  There  is  no  adequate  safe- 
guard against  unfit  births  except  an  early  acquired 
ideal  of  preparation  for  parenthood:  an  ideal  a- 
mounting  to  a  passion,  strong  enough  to  keep  the 
baser  passions  in  subjection,  to  hold  the  strong 
young  men  to  a  purity  of  life,  to  a  rational  use  and 
a  normal  development  of  all  their  youthful  powers ; 
an  ideal  of  motherhood  not  too  remote  or  too  at- 


INFANCY  23 

tenuated  to  exercise  a  positive  influence  on  the 
youthful  maidens  among  all  the  new  tendencies  and 
temptations,  the  strong  currents  of  opinion  and 
emancipating  waves  of  emotion  to  which  they  are 
subjected.  Domestic  ideals  have  rivals  in  our  time. 
They  must  be  exalted  the  more.  We  must  edu- 
cate toward  them,  whatever  other  ideals  we  are 
also  ready  to  recognize. 

ANTE-NATAL  LIFE 

After  the  child  has  begun  its  ante-natal  life,  of 
healthy  parents,  united  under  the  sanction  of  so- 
ciety, the  next  stage  is  comparatively  simple.  The 
normal  outcome  is  the  birth  of  a  living  child;  and 
so  powerfully  does  nature  work  toward  this  end 
that  a  very  moderate  amount  of  attention  is  usually 
sufficient  to  insure  it.  The  problem  is  further 
simplified  by  the  fact  that  the  welfare  of  the  child 
at  this  stage  depends  on  the  welfare  and  intelli- 
gence of  one  individual — its  mother — who,  if  our 
preliminary  conditions  have  been  met,  is  normal  in 
mind  and  body  and  has  the  good  of  the  child  at 
heart. 

At  present,  it  is  true,  this  ante-natal  period  ap- 
pears to  be  the  most  dangerous  period  of  life. 
English  and  French  authorities  have  estimated 
that  one  out  of  five  or  six  pregnancies  end  in  abor- 
tion or  miscarriage.*     The  proportion  may  not  be 

*  The  latest  available  English  estimates,  in  the  Forty- 
third  Annual  Report  (1913-14)  of  the  Medical  Officer  of  the 


24  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

so  large  in  this  country,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  waste  of  life  in  this  way  is  enormous.  In 
addition,  there  are  the  children  born  dead,  though 
at  full  term,  which  probably  occurs  in  at  least  one 
case  out  of  twenty.*  We  should  consider  in  this 
connection  also  the  large  number  of  deaths  in  the 
first  month  of  infancy  which  are  attributable  to 
congenital  debility,  prematurity,  convulsions,  mal- 
formations, and  injuries  at  birth.  The  infant 
death-rate  from  congenital  causes  has  been  prac- 
tically unaffected  by  the  measures  which  have  been 
so  extraordinarily  successful  in  cutting  down  the 
infant  death-rate  as  a  whole  in  many  cities  in  the 
last  few  years,  and  sanitarians  are  agreed  in  urging 
extensive  and  thorough  provision  for  ante-natal  in- 
struction as  the  most  important  measure  to  be 
taken  if  it  is  hoped  to  effect  any  considerable 
further  reduction  in  infant  mortality. 

A  large  part  of  this  loss  of  life  before  birth,  or  im- 
mediately after,  is  sheer  flagrant  waste,  which 
would  be  avoided  if  the  most  elementary  social 
policies  were  in  force.  Statistical  statements  on 
these   points  must  be  made  guardedly,   but  the 

Local  Government  Board  (page  xxviii),  are  somewhat  lower: 
a  total  ante-natal  mortality,  including  still-births,  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  per  one  thousand  births,  one-half  of 
which  may  be  ascribed  to  syphilis.  This  estimate  still  makes 
the  ante-natal  mortality  much  higher  than  the  total  mor- 
tality in  the  first  year  after  birth. 

*  This  is  about  the  proportion  of  still-births  in  New  York 
City  at  the  present  time,  but  it  is  probable  that  many  still- 
births are  not  yet  reported. 


INFANCY  25 

elimination  of  intemperance,  of  the  physical  dis- 
ease of  syphilis,  and  the  social  fact  of  illegitimacy 
would  certainly  eliminate  over  half  the  miscarriages, 
still-births,  and  abortions,  natural  and  criminal, 
that  occur.  For  the  rest,  and  for  the  early  deaths 
after  birth,  what  is  mainly  needed  is  such  a  family 
budget  and  such  conditions  in  the  home  as  will  give 
the  mother  a  moderate  degree  of  comfort  and  rea- 
sonable freedom  from  anxiety  and  overwork;  such 
provision  of  advice  and  instruction  for  her,  adapted 
to  her  understanding,  as  will  save  the  embryonic 
human  being  from  actual  violence  through  her 
ignorance  or  carelessness,  and  bring  it  to  birth  in 
the  best  possible  condition;  and  such  competent 
attendance  at  birth  as  will  do  away  absolutely  with 
all  avoidable  injuries  to  mother  or  child. 

It  is  astounding  how  very  moderate  are  the  needs 
of  the  mother  at  this  time,  and  how  great  the  re- 
turn for  a  slight  investment  in  her  comfort.  Five 
hundred  French  babies  whose  mothers  spent  ten 
days  or  more  in  a  pre-maternity  home  before  con- 
finement were  found  to  weigh  twelve  per  cent  more, 
which  means  that  in  other  ways  also  they  were  con- 
siderably better  equipped  for  life,  than  five  hundred 
whose  mothers,  otherwise  in  much  the  same  cir- 
cumstances, worked  up  to  the  day  of  confinement. 
The  study  recently  published  by  the  Children's 
Bureau  shows  that  in  Johnstown,  Pennsylvania, 
the  infant  mortality  rate  in  the  poorest  families 
was  three  times  as  great  as  in  the  families  in  com- 


26  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

fortable  circumstances  where  the  father's  annual 
earnings  amounted  to  $1200  or  more.  It  is  exceed- 
ingly important  that  there  should  not  be  overwork 
of  any  kind  (or  over-fatigue  through  social  func- 
tions or  pleasures)  at  any  time  during  this  critical 
period,  and  that  toward  its  end  there  should  be  a 
considerable  lightening  of  tasks  and  responsibility; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  necessary,  or  even 
desirable,  that  the  mother  should  spend  the  nine 
months  in  idleness.  Occupations  suited  to  her 
strength  are  an  advantage. 

The  definite  instruction  of  prospective  mothers  is 
a  social  service  and  a  social  duty  of  the  first  order 
of  importance.  There  is  perhaps  no  other  form 
of  social  work  which  yields  larger  returns  on  the 
modest  investment  required.  It  is  a  service  needed 
by  the  comfortably  well-to-do  as  by  the  poor.  It 
can  be  rendered  by  a  qualified  private  physician 
or  an  experienced  mother  as  well  as  by  a  nurse 
from  the  Department  of  Health,  but  when  instruc- 
tion from  natural  private  sources  is  lacking,  then 
it  should  be  provided  at  public  expense.  Encourag- 
ing beginnings  have  been  made  by  governmental 
agencies  and  private  organizations  in  various  places, 
and  the  results  which  are  everywhere  apparent 
after  only  a  brief  trial  leave  no  doubt  as  to  the 
desirability  of  greatly  extending  such  service. 

The  Federal  Children's  Bureau  made  the  prepara- 
tion  of  an   authoritative  pamphlet  on   Pre-natal 


INFANCY  27 

Care*  one  of  the  first  claims  on  the  very  moderate 
resources  of  its  first  year's  appropriation,  and  this 
has  proved  to  be  one  of  the  popular  publications 
of  the  government.  It  is  deservedly  so,  for  it  is 
written  by  a  competent  mother,  simply,  clearly, 
and  scientifically,  explaining  everything  in  such  a 
way  as  to  inspire  confidence  in  the  advice  given 
and  to  dissipate  unnecessary  alarms  and  fears. 
For  the  normal  American  woman  who  can  read  and 
understand  simple  English  and  follow  simple  in- 
structions nothing  could  be  better. 

There  are  many  mothers,  however,  who,  un- 
fortunately, can  not  profit  by  such  instruction  as 
this.  For  them  an  organized  clinic  service,  of 
physicians  and  of  nurses  with  special  aptitude  and 
qualifications,  is  needed  in  the  cities  and  towns. 
In  rural  districts  this  work  can  probably  best  be 
done  through  a  district-nursing  system.  The 
Budin  Foundation  in  Paris  is  a  classic  example  of 
this  kind  of  service,  but  the  New  Zealand  Society 
for  the  Health  of  Women  and  Children  bids  fair  to 
become  the  best  known  in  America,  through  the 
publication,  recently,  by  the  Children's  Bureau  of 
an  account  of  its  methods.  The  instruction  and 
supervision  given  by  such  organizations  are  not 
confined  to  the  ante-natal  period;  their  ante-natal 
work,  in  fact,  is  usually  an  extension  backward 
from  milk-stations  and  visitation  of  new-born 
*  By  Mrs.  Max  West. 


28  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

babies,  as  the  necessity  of  beginning  earlier  becomes 
apparent. 

The  New  Zealand  Society  is  a  private  organiza- 
tion, supervised  and  subsidized  by  the  government. 
In  the  five  years  after  it  was  organized  the  infant 
mortality  of  the  city  of  Dunedin,  where  it  has  its 
headquarters,  a  residential  city  of  about  sixty 
thousand  inhabitants,  was  exactly  cut  in  two,  and 
brought  to  a  point  considerably  lower  than  that  of 
New  Zealand  in  general,  though  at  the  beginning 
of  the  period  it  was  already  lower  than  in  any 
American  city  for  which  we  have  credible  data.  In 
New  York  City,  among  the  three  thousand  moth- 
ers supervised  by  the  Milk  Committee  and  by  the 
Department  of  Health  in  the  first  year  after  it  took 
over  the  pre-natal  work  of  the  Committee,  the 
percentage  of  still-births  and  of  premature  births 
was  considerably  less  than  the  average  for  the 
city,  only  about  half  as  many  babies  died  during 
their  first  month  and  only  four  mothers  in  all,  and 
over  ninety  per  cent  of  the  babies  were  still  being 
fed  entirely  from  the  breast  at  the  end  of  their 
first  month. 

BIRTH 

Ante-natal  care  involves,  as  we  have  seen,  clinics 
and  home  visiting.  It  involves  also  hospital  ac- 
commodation for  complicated  cases  of  pregnancy, 
and  advance  supervision  of  preparations  for  con- 
finement, whether  under  the  care  of  physicians  or 
midwives.     The  training  of  midwives  and  official 


INFANCY  29 

recognition  of  their  calling  seem  to  be  a  present 
necessity,  if  not  a  permanent  policy.  Ante-natal 
care  incidentally  gives  an  opportunity  for  personal 
contact  between  capable  nurses  and  midwives 
which  should  help  to  increase  the  efficiency  and 
raise  the  standards  of  the  practice  of  midwifery. 
Related  to  this  is  the  diminution  which  may  be 
expected  in  the  number  of  cases  of  ophthalmia  neo- 
natorum by  instructing  mothers  to  insist  that  the 
effective  silver  drops  shall  be  applied  to  the  eyes 
immediately  after  birth;  for  while  it  is  a  reproach 
to  our  sanitary  standards  that  this  precaution 
should  be  necessary,  nevertheless  it  is  necessary, 
and  will  be  necessary  until  the  infectious  disease 
which  is  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  congenital 
blindness  has  become  as  rare  as  small-pox,  instead 
of  being,  as  at  present,  more  prevalent  than  measles. 
Mainly,  however,  and  inclusive  of  all  the  other 
anticipated  results  of  ante-natal  instruction  and 
supervision,  is  the  production  of  healthier  and 
stronger  children  and  a  reduction  of  the  general 
infant  mortality  and  morbidity. 

At  the  time  of  birth  the  minimum  requirement  is 
skilled  and  prompt  attendance  in  normal  confine- 
ment at  home,  and  prompt  and  adequate  hospital 
care  when  there  are  conditions  involving  special 
danger  to  mother  or  child,  unless  the  home  condi- 
tions are  exceptionally  favorable  for  constant  medi- 
cal and  nursing  oversight. 

Even  for  the  normal  labor  of  mothers  in  com- 

3 


30  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

fortable  economic  circumstances  the  use  of  the  ma- 
ternity hospital  grows  apace,  for  the  reason  given 
by  Sir  Thomas  More  some  centuries  ago  as  to  why 
hospitals  were  used  in  his  Utopia,  simply  that  they 
were  more  comfortable  places  in  which  to  be  sick. 
The  registration  of  every  birth  is  an  essential 
feature  of  our  social  program,  but  one  which  we 
have  been  exceedingly  remiss  in  recognizing.  For 
lack  of  an  accurate  record  of  births  we  can  only 
guess  about  such  vital  questions  as  the  natural 
increase  of  population  and  the  rate  of  infant  mor- 
tality in  most  of  our  cities  and  states  and  in  the 
United  States  as  a  whole.  Child-labor  laws,  and 
other  legislation  involving  proof  of  age  or  nativity, 
are  creating  and  increasing  popular  appreciation 
of  the  usefulness  of  this  piece  of  red  tape,  as  it  has 
probably  been  regarded  by  the  average  native 
American.  In  many  cities  documentary  evidence 
of  age  is  required  both  to  get  into  school  and  to  get 
out,  if  release  is  desired  as  early  as  possible.  Birth 
certificates  are  frequently  needed  to  establish  a 
right  to  inheritance  or  to  American  citizenship. 
Of  even  greater  importance  to  the  individual,  how- 
ever, though  he  may  not  so  readily  see  it,  is  the 
basis  an  accurate  registration  of  births  gives  to  the 
sanitarian  for  studying  the  fluctuations  of  infant 
mortality,  that  "sensitive  index  .  .  .  of  social 
welfare  and  of  sanitary  administration,"*  and  the 
starting-point  it  furnishes  for  the  operation  of  a 
*  Newsholme. 


INFANCY  31 

systematic  supervision  of  babies.  The  Census 
Bureau  is  working  away  at  this  problem,  as  it  is 
at  the  registration  of  deaths.  It  must  be  solved 
chiefly,  however,  by  the  local  boards  of  health. 
There  is  no  reason  why  every  city  in  the  country 
should  not  have,  within  half  a  dozen  years,  if  it 
wants  it,  a  record  of  births  that  is  practically  com- 
plete. Recent  tests  in  New  York  indicate  that 
ninety-eight  or  ninety-nine  per  cent  are  now  prop- 
erly reported  in  that  city,  and  if  that  is  possible  in 
New  York,  with  its  unparalleled  difficulties  of 
varieties  in  custom  and  language,  it  is  possible  any- 
where in  the  country.  By  acknowledgment  of  the 
receipt  of  certificates,  by  mailing  copies  to  the 
parents,  by  occasional  checking-up  canvasses  of 
selected  blocks  and  enforcement  of  penalties  against 
persons  found  to  have  been  neglectful,  an  intelli- 
gent and  resourceful  Board  of  Health  can  success- 
fully establish  the  cooperation  of  physicians, 
midwives,  and  parents. 

INFANCY 
We  may  now  assume  that  the  child  whose  career 
we  are  following  is  properly  registered  and  launched 
into  infancy.  The  fundamental  problem  in  this 
stage  is  to  keep  the  delicate  things  alive.  The 
mere  business  of  being  a  baby,  it  has  been  said, 
ought  to  be  classed  as  an  extra-hazardous  occupa- 
tion. It  is  far  more  hazardous  than  it  need  be, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  far  less  hazardous  than 


32  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

it  was  a  few  years  ago,  in  certain  places  where  at- 
tention has  been  given  to  removing  some  of  the 
more  obvious  dangers.  Wherever  experiments 
have  been  intelligently  tried,  the  results,  as  in  the 
case  of  ante-natal  care,  have  been  almost  theatrical. 
Reference  has  been  made  to  the  New  Zealand 
city  where,  in  five  years,  an  infant  mortality  rate 
which  we  would  be  tempted  to  consider  low  was 
actually  cut  down  to  half  what  it  had  been.  Our 
largest  American  city  can  show  an  improvement 
almost  as  encouraging,  considering  its  much  less 
favorable  general  conditions.  There  are  actually 
fewer  babies  dying  now  every  year  in  New  York 
City  than  there  were  in  1870,  when  the  population 
was  only  about  a  third  what  it  is  now.  Ten  years 
ago  in  New  York  City  fifteen  out  of  every  hundred 
babies  born  alive  died  before  they  were  a  year  old.* 
At  present  this  figure  has  been  reduced  to  less  than 
ten.  That  means  that  ninety  of  every  hundred 
babies  now  being  born  may  expect  to  live  through 
their  first  year,  instead  of  only  eighty-five.  It 
means  also,  what  is  equally  or  more  important,  that 
these  ninety  reach  their  first  birthday  anniversary 
in  much  better  condition  than  the  eighty-five  ten 
years  ago,  and  are  much  more  likely  to  live  through 
their  second  and  third  and  fourth  and  succeeding 

*  The  figure  was  one  hundred  and  fifty-three  per  one  thou- 
sand births  for  the  decade  1 896-1905  for  Manhattan  and 
Bronx,  assuming  that  ninety  per  cent  of  the  births  were 
registered  at  that  time;  in  1914,  when  the  registration  of 
births  was  almost  complete,  the  rate  was  ninety-eight. 


INFANCY  33 

years,  and  not  merely  to  "live  through"  them,  but 
to  "live"  them  in  full  health  and  vigor.  It  will  be 
harder  to  save  the  ninety-first  baby,  and  the  ninety- 
second,  ninety-third,  ninety-fourth,  and  ninety- 
fifth,  as  they  have  already  done  in  the  far-away 
little  city  in  the  southern  seas,  but  it  can  probably 
be  done. 

The  saving  which  has  been  effected  in  New  York 
and  other  large  cities,  in  Europe  as  well  as  in  Amer- 
ica, has  been  largely  among  babies  over  a  month 
old,  and  it  has  been  brought  about  almost  entirely 
by  attention  to  what  the  sanitarians  call  "hygienic 
and  dietetic  errors."  The  combined  efforts  of  pri- 
vate philanthropy  and  the  Department  of  Health, 
through  milk  stations  and  other  educational  work, 
have  succeeded  in  materially  reducing  the  preva- 
lence of  diarrheal  diseases,  and  incidentally,  by 
improved  nutrition,  increasing  the  child's  resist- 
ance to  pneumonia  and  other  infectious  diseases. 
This  has  been  done  by  encouraging  mothers  to 
nurse  their  babies,  teaching  them  how  to  meet 
their  simple  but  imperative  needs  of  pure  air  and 
clean  and  suitable  food  with  the  resources  at  their 
command,  supplementing  these  resources  when 
necessary,  and  furnishing  expert  counsel  in  emer- 
gencies. Improvement  in  the  milk  supply  and  in 
the  water  supply  and  in  housing  conditions  and 
the  general  standard  of  living  have  also  undoubt- 
edly been  factors,  operating  less  directly  and  over  a 
longer  period,  but  still  of  fundamental  importance. 


34  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

By  these  means  fatalities  from  acute  gastroin- 
testinal diseases  have  been  extraordinarily,  and 
those  due  to  respiratory  diseases  appreciably,  re- 
duced, and  the  way  has  been  made  clear  for  further 
reduction. 

By  these  means  also  the  gravity  of  the  causes 
operating  at  or  before  birth  to  produce  death  in  the 
first  month  of  life  has  been  brought  into  light;  for 
the  mortality  from  congenital  diseases  has  re- 
mained practically  stationary,  while  the  improve- 
ment in  the  other  important  groups  has  been  going 
on,  until  they  have  ousted  diarrheal  diseases  from 
the  unenviable  first  place  among  the  causes  of 
infant  deaths,  and  are  responsible  for  forty  per 
cent  of  the  total  number.  Even  here,  however, 
though  some  of  the  causes  remain  obscure,  we  are 
already  in  position  to  do  as  much  as  has  been  done 
with  respect  to  the  infectious  diseases  of  the  diges- 
tive organs.  A  large  proportion  of  these  deaths  in 
the  first  days  of  infancy  are  due  to  lack  of  adequate 
care  before  or  at  birth  or  immediately  after,  and 
to  ante-natal  infection,  and  they  can  be  avoided  by 
providing  the  proper  care,  and  by  preventing  the 
infection  in  such  ways  as  we  have  indicated. 

It  is  desirable  that  the  mother  should  not  be  over- 
burdened by  physical  or  mental  tasks  in  the  months 
preceding  the  child's  birth,  but  a  blanket  injunction 
against  wage-earning  would  not  yet  be  warranted, 
because  it  seems  to  be  difficult  to  determine  just 
what  forms  of  employment  are  injurious  and  at 


INFANCY  35 

what  point  the  injury  begins.  That  a  woman 
should  not  be  employed  in  a  steam  laundry  or  an 
ordinary  factory,  or  in  any  other  occupation  making 
similar  demands  on  her  strength,  in  the  weeks  im- 
mediately before  confinement  is  generally  agreed, 
and  legislation  to  this  effect  should  be  extended, 
even  though  there  is  probably  no  considerable 
number  of  American  women  in  danger  of  subjecting 
themselves  to  such  risks.  It  is  in  the  first  year  of 
the  child's  life,  however,  rather  than  before  its 
birth,  that  the  problem  of  the  wage-earning  mother 
is  the  most  serious.  John  Burns  once  referred,  in 
his  picturesque  way,  to  countries  "where  industries 
flourish,  where  mothers  labour,  and  where  babies 
decay";  and  it  is  not  an  accident  that  textile 
workers  in  England  show  an  infant  mortality  rate 
exceeded  only  by  that  among  miners  and  unskilled 
laborers,*  nor  that  Fall  River  and  Lowell,  New 
London  and  Willimantic  have  much  higher  rates 
than  New  York  and  Boston.  Any  work — pro- 
fessional, industrial,  or  unclassified — which  inter- 
feres with  the  nursing  of  the  child  by  its  mother, 
either  because  it  exhausts  her  power  or  because  it 
keeps  her  away  from  home,  is  condemned  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  child's  welfare.  Day  nurseries 
attached  to  factories  in  which  the  work  is  not  ar- 
duous and  the  sanitary  conditions  are  good  might 
be  a  genuine  advantage  to  mother,  child,  and  em- 

*  Forty-third   Annual    Report   of  the   Local   Government 
Board,  p.  xxix. 


36  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

ployer.  Day  nurseries  which  receive  babies  a 
week  or  ten  days  old  at  seven  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing and  hand  them  back  to  their  mothers  at  seven 
o'clock  at  night  may  well  consider  whether  they 
are  not  blindly  working  against  the  very  thing 
they  have  most  at  heart — the  child's  welfare. 

Employment  of  the  mother  is  only  one  of  the 
factors  in  home  life  which  has  an  influence  on  the 
survival  and  the  health  of  babies.  All  the  adverse 
conditions  which  go  to  make  up  a  low  standard  of 
living  are  unfavorable  to  health  at  any  age,  and 
they  are  most  unfavorable  in  the  delicate  and  sensi- 
tive stage  of  infancy.  In  any  of  our  cities  it  is  the 
poorest  and  most  crowded  districts  in  which  the 
babies  die  fastest — unless  it  happens,  as  in  New 
York,  that  there  is  some  complicating  factor,  like 
race,  to  interfere.  It  is  not  possible  to  pick  out  the 
various  elements  in  a  low  standard  of  living  and 
determine  just  what  effect  each  one  has  on  infant 
mortality, — or  on  any  other  social  problem, — but 
the  general  connection  is  undeniable.  Ignorance 
and  dirt,  the  baby's  worst  enemies,  are  the  natural 
accompaniments  of  poverty.  The  Children's  Bu- 
reau found  in  Johnstown  that  the  infant  mortality 
was  five  times  as  great  in  the  poorest  ward  as  in  the 
section  containing  the  homes  of  the  well-to-do; 
that,  in  general,  it  fell  as  the  earnings  of  husbands 
rose  and  the  proportion  of  wage-earning  wives  de- 
clined ;  that  it  was  considerably  lower  in  dry,  clean 
homes  containing  a  bath-tub,  than  in  damp,  dirty 


INFANCY  37 

homes  with  no  water-supply  in  the  house;  that 
of  the  babies  who  slept  at  night  in  a  well-ventilated 
room  (nearly  half  of  them  did,  by  the  way)  only 
one  died  in  proportion  to  every  six  whose  mothers 
carefully  kept  the  windows  shut  tight;  that  babies 
had  a  better  chance  to  live  if  their  mothers  could 
read  some  language  and  could  speak  English  and 
had  been  in  the  United  States  more  than  five  years 
— not  so  much  because  of  the  direct  and  intrinsic 
advantage  to  the  individual  baby  of  a  literate 
mother  who  has  had  the  privilege  of  residence  in 
this  country,  as  because  these  items,  like  the  bath- 
tub, happened  to  be  in  Johnstown  convenient  in- 
dexes to  the  general  economic  status  of  the  home. 
The  welfare  of  the  baby,  we  have  tried  to  em- 
phasize, depends  primarily  upon  its  home,  and 
within  the  home  primarily  on  its  mother,  but  we 
must  not  entirely  overlook  the  contribution  of  the 
government,  especially  the  municipal  government, 
toward  making  the  home  what  it  should  be  and 
giving  the  mother  an  opportunity  to  meet  her  obli- 
gations. Home  conditions  depend  more  and  more, 
in  our  cities,  upon  general  sanitary  conditions, 
which  the  most  intelligent  and  best-intentioned 
father  of  a  family  can  affect  only  slightly.  A 
minimum  standard  of  housing,  with  respect  to 
safety,  decency,  water-supply,  and  ventilation; 
an  adequate  drainage  system  for  all  parts  of  the 
city;  an  abundant  supply  of  pure  water  for  drink- 
ing and  household  purposes;    an  efficient  street- 


38  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

cleaning  service;  supervision  of  the  milk  supply; 
maintenance  of  small  parks  at  frequent  intervals — 
these  are  some  of  the  main  features  of  municipal 
housekeeping  which  are  prerequisite  to  family 
housekeeping  of  a  kind  favorable  to  babies.  The 
local  Department  of  Health  has  its  special  responsi- 
bility for  infectious  diseases  and  the  opportunity, 
if  taxpayers  will  furnish  the  funds,  to  extend  its 
supervisory  and  educational  work  for  mothers  and 
children. 

Still  another  element  in  the  saving  of  babies  and 
the  improvement  of  the  physical  basis  of  the  in- 
dividual's life  is  further  advance  in  medical  knowl- 
edge of  children's  diseases  and  of  their  causation. 
All  social  measures  and  all  individual  measures  to 
this  end  must  rest  on  the  teachings  of  science,  and 
it  is  the  skill  and  insight  of  the  individual  physician 
that  determine  again  and  again  whether  a  particu- 
lar baby  shall  live  or  die.  Higher  standards  of 
general  medical  education,  the  including  in  the 
general  curriculum  of  a  larger  amount  of  specialized 
instruction  in  the  diseases  of  infancy  (all  groups  of 
medical  specialists  urge  this  in  regard  to  their 
specialities,  and  rightly)  and  encouragement  of 
advanced  study  in  this  difficult  and  elusive  field, 
are  technical  and  scientific  problems  of  general 
social  interest. 

Our  normal  child  spends  its  infancy  at  home. 
It  does  not  begin  life  motherless  or  fatherless,  nor 
does  its  mother  leave  it  on  a  door-step  or  in  the 


INFANCY  39 

turning  cradle  of  a  hospitable  institution  on  her 
first  day  out  of  the  maternity  ward.  Motherless 
and  fatherless  babies  are  not  a  part  of  our  normal 
scheme,  and  there  will  be  fewer  and  fewer  individ- 
uals thus  handicapped  at  the  outset  of  life  as  sound 
social  policies  become  effective.  There  may  always 
be  a  few  orphans,  but  under  normal  conditions  they 
will  be  individual  problems, — for  aunts  and  grand- 
mothers and  older  sisters,  mainly, — not  social 
problems  for  the  city  department  of  charities. 
Provision  for  foundlings,  like  the  routine  adminis- 
tering of  silver  nitrate  at  birth,  is  a  present  neces- 
sity on  account  of  the  existence  of  abnormal  con- 
ditions, which  we  must  use  every  effort  to  elimi- 
nate. As  long  as  it  is  a  necessity,  however,  we 
must  see  that  it  is  done  in  such  a  way  as  to  mitigate 
the  handicap  of  the  individual  child.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  infant  mortality  rate  of  foundlings 
should  be  one  hundred  per  cent,  as  it  is  in  some  in- 
stitutions. There  seems  to  be  an  immense  ad- 
vantage for  the  baby,  and  consequently  for  the 
state,  in  small,  simple,  inexpensive  cottages,  each 
in  charge  of  a  nurse.  There  are  still  greater  ad- 
vantages in  persuading  unmarried  mothers  not  to 
relinquish  their  babies,  and  in  finding  them  posi- 
tions where  they  can  work  out  their  own  rehabilita- 
tion. 

THE  BIRTH-RATE 

We  can  hardly  leave  this  review  of  the  social 
problems  surrounding   the   beginnings  of   the  in- 


40  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

dividual  life  without  taking  into  consideration  the 
phenomenon  of  the  declining  birth-rate. 

Whether  it  is  an  individual  duty  to  marry  and 
beget  children;  whether  it  is  a  social  duty  to  modify 
our  marriage  and  courtship  traditions  so  that  all 
of  either  sex  who  have  the  power  of  fecundity  and 
the  desire  for  children  shall  have  a  better  oppor- 
tunity to  have  them ;  whether  in  the  married  state 
the  practice  of  race  suicide  is  an  ominous  danger; 
whether  it  is  unfortunate  for  the  race  that,  gen- 
erally speaking,  an  economic  line  separates  the 
families  that  have  automobiles  from  those  that 
have  perambulators — these  are  perplexing  ques- 
tions. Some  are  no  doubt  accused  of  race  suicide 
who  are  really  only  punished  by  the  sterility  of  a 
present  or  a  past  disease.  Some  shrink  from  pa- 
renthood because  of  a  false  standard  of  living  which, 
before  middle  life  is  past,  they  may  bitterly  repent. 
But,  generally  speaking  again,  the  heart  of  man  still 
responds  healthily  to  the  words  of  the  Psalmist: 

Lo,  children  are  a  heritage  of  the  Lord  and 
the  fruit  of  the  womb  is  his  reward.  As  ar- 
rows are  in  the  hand  of  a  mighty  man,  so  are 
children  of  the  youth.  Happy  is  the  man  that 
hath  his  quiver  full  of  them. 

Still,  as  in  primeval  times,  the  normal  man  longs 
to  see  his  children's  children.  That  means  an  over- 
lapping of  the  generations  which  is  for  the  good  of 
all.  Just  how  many  children  there  should  be  in  a 
"full"  quiver  is  another  question.     In  the  good  old 


INFANCY  41 

colonial  days  families  of  eight  or  ten  or  twelve  were 
common;  and  the  New  England  and  Virginia 
churchyards  are  full  of  graves  of  babies  and  of 
women  worn  out  by  motherhood  before  they  had 
reached  forty.  Dr.  Alice  Hamilton  found  in  Chi- 
cago, a  few  years  ago,  in  a  study  of  fifteen  hundred 
families,  that  the  infant  death-rate  in  the  large 
families  (of  six  children  or  more)  was  two  and  a  half 
times  as  high  as  it  was  in  the  families  of  moderate 
size  (four  children  or  less)  in  similar  economic  cir- 
cumstances. The  recent  Johnstown  study  bears 
the  same  testimony;  and  Sir  Arthur  Newsholme, 
in  the  report  already  quoted,  presents  an  interest- 
ing table  of  "fertility  rates"  and  infant  mortality 
rates  for  the  principal  economic  classes  of  England 
and  Wales,  which  shows  that  a  high  fertility  rate 
is  accompanied  by  a  high  mortality,  and  vice  verst, 
except  among  the  textile  workers,  where  relatively 
few  babies  are  born  and  a  large  proportion  die. 

There  are  problems  both  of  race  suicide  and  of 
overpopulation.  It  is  not  desirable  that  the  fami- 
lies of  successful  achievement  should  die  out;  nor 
is  it  desirable  that  the  human  race  should  be  per- 
petuated in  the  wasteful  fashion  of  fishes  and  the 
lower  animals.  The  solution  of  the  problem  of 
race  suicide  lies  in  such  educational  propaganda  as 
we  have  seen  in  our  generation ;  in  the  exaltation  of 
simpler,  healthier  ideals;  in  controlling  the  dis- 
eases which  produce  sterility;  in  economic  re- 
adjustment  of   the   sexes,    following   the   gradual 


42  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

emancipation  of  woman  from  antiquated  restric- 
tions. There  is  no  need  of  organized  agitation  to 
prevent  an  excessive  birth-rate.  Economic  forces 
are  quite  as  effective  in  this  direction  as  the  welfare 
of  society  demands.  Private  property,  family 
responsibility,  educational  standards,  the  adoption 
by  immigrants  of  the  standard  of  living  of  their 
neighbors,  and  other  institutional  checks,  seem 
likely  to  keep  population  well  within  the  means  of 
subsistence,  even  within  the  boundaries  of  a  nor- 
mal life.  The  present  obstacles  to  the  enjoyment 
of  a  normal  life  which  primarily  concern  us  are  far 
within  the  boundaries  of  that  ultimate  pressure  of 
population  which  justly  gave  concern  to  our  an- 
cestors and  may,  under  new  conditions,  again  per- 
plex future  generations. 


n 

CHILDHOOD 


THE  HOME  AND  THE  SCHOOL 
Babies  are  chiefly  concerned,  if  we  may  imagine 
them  as  visualizing  their  own  social  problem,  in 
remaining  alive.  The  stupendous  responsibility 
for  getting  safely  born  and  getting  a  start  in  life 
precludes  much  serious  attention  to  the  matters 
which  are  to  vex  them,  and  us,  at  a  later  stage. 

Between  infancy  and  adolescence,  however, 
there  lie  a  dozen  years  or  so  which  may  be  called 
the  crucial  period  in  social  construction.  Child- 
hood is,  above  all,  for  education,  as  infancy  is  for 
physical  well-being.  The  problems  of  physical 
well-being  indeed  persist,  but  if  those  of  infancy 
have  been  met,  they  are  of  constantly  diminishing 
seriousness  and  difficulty.  If  the  child  is  strong  and 
well  at  the  end  of  the  first  year,  the  nurse  may  give 
first  place  thenceforth  to  the  teacher.  The  family 
must  still  protect,  of  course,  but  it  becomes  from 
the  child's  standpoint  every  day  less  a  shell  and 
more  an  atmosphere;  relatively  less  a  mere  guar- 
antee of  existence  and  relatively  more  an  aid  to 
growth,  a  training  for  independent  existence;  less 
a  nursery  and  more  a  seminary;  less  a  trysting- 
place  of  the  parents  alone  and  more  also  a  "tryst- 
ing-place  of  the  generations." 

Without  dwelling  upon  the  transition  from  in- 
4  45 


46  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

fancy  to  childhood,  we  may  proceed  directly  to  a 
recognition  of  the  large  fact  that  the  social  problems 
of  childhood  and  adolescence  cluster  largely  around 
the  school,  as  those  of  infancy  center  in  the  mother, 
and  those  of  mature  life  in  industry.  The  home 
belongs  to  no  one  period.  Throughout  the  normal 
life  of  man  the  home  is  its  natural  background — its 
essential  expression.  No  one  period  of  life  monop- 
olizes it.  If  the  home  exists  in  one  sense  primarily 
for  the  sake  of  infancy  and  childhood,  it  is  equally 
true  that  without  it  maturity  and  old  age  would 
be  meaningless  and  incomplete. 

Not,  therefore,  to  minimize  the  home,  but  to 
characterize  the  particular  problems  in  social  con- 
struction which  spring  from  the  needs  of  child- 
hood, we  place  the  school  for  the  time  being  in  the 
foreground. 

When  we  pass  from  infancy  to  childhood,  from 
the  home  to  the  school,  we  cross  the  boundary  into 
a  province  in  which  the  responsibility  of  society  is 
enormously  increased.  Whether  a  baby  lives  or 
dies  depends,  after  all,  under  normal  conditions, 
mainly  on  the  baby  itself  and  its  mother;  and,  as 
we  have  seen,  remaining  alive  at  that  stage  is  the 
main  thing.  Whether  the  child  receives  an  educa- 
tion, however;  whether  its  health  is  conserved; 
whether  it  is  guided  into  an  appropriate  vocation 
and  has  a  reasonable  chance  for  play  and  for  help- 
ful associations — depend  more  upon  society  than 
upon  the  narrower  family  circle.     The  baby  is  the 


CHILDHOOD  47 

home's  treasure,  but  the  child  belongs  to  society 
from  a  very  early  age,  and  the  walls  of  the  most  pro- 
tected family  are  but  a  frail  barrier  against  the 
hundreds  of  social  contacts  which  mold  and  in- 
fluence the  child  life. 

THE  SOCIAL  TASK  OF  EDUCATION 
Education  may  be  taken  as  a  very  broad  term 
for  the  entire  conscious  process  of  passing  on  from 
one  generation  to  another  the  accumulated  treas- 
ures, the  acquired  capacities,  of  the  race.  So  con- 
ceived, it  touches  every  age,  but  childhood  is  its 
special  province — the  period  marked  by  nature  as 
peculiarly  adapted  to  this  process. 

If,  as  Professor  Thompson  says,*  unlike  the 
beasts  that  perish,  man  has  a  social  heritage,  handed 
on  from  one  generation  to  another,  so  that  we  are 
not  dependent  upon  our  biological  inheritance 
alone,  it  is  to  childhood  that  this  debt  is  paid,  by 
the  children  that  the  new  credit  is  acquired  in 
trust  for  the  years  ahead,  in  which  they  are  to  be 
the  living  link  between  the  past  with  its  achieve- 
ments, and  the  future  with  its  possibilities.  If 
therefore  the  social  structure  is  to  be  sound  and 
suitable,  childhood  must  have  its  chance,  must 
have  time  enough  to  perform  its  function,  must  not 
be  cheated  of  its  debt,  expected  to  yield  a  harvest 
of  figs  from  a  sowing  of  thistles. 

If  we  analyze  this  social  task  of  education  from 
*  Heredity. 


48  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

our  present  point  of  view,  one  part  of  it  undoubtedly 
consists  in  the  mere  preservation  of  actual  informa- 
tion. We  need  not  concern  ourselves  very  much 
about  that.  The  printing-press  has  solved  it. 
True,  there  is  information  which  can  be  preserved 
and  imparted  only  in  other  ways,  for  example, 
through  art.  Paintings,  sculpture,  architecture, 
music,  all  tell  their  own  story  in  a  way  that  descrip- 
tions of  them,  even  critical  studies  of  them,  do  not. 
The  hand  which  can  conceive  and  execute  works  of 
art,  and  the  eye  which  can  see  and  appreciate  them, 
are  essential  to  the  preservation  of  our  social  heri- 
tage. Actual  and  valuable  information  perishes 
from  the  world  if  as  an  incident  of  warfare  works  of 
art  are  destroyed,  or  if,  through  the  failure  of  edu- 
cation, we  cease  to  know  their  value.  Arts  of  skill 
might  disappear  in  the  same  way.  But,  speaking 
largely,  the  next  generation  is  not  in  serious  danger 
of  a  dearth  of  information.  Newspapers  deluge 
us  with  it,  books  record  and  elaborate  and  refine 
upon  it.  Research  adds  to  it  enormously.  Every 
process  of  industry  turns  it  out  as  a  by-product. 
Government  is  engaged  to  a  great  extent  in  facili- 
tating its  distribution  and  increasing  its  amount. 
Schools  have  been  organized  to  impart  it.  We 
shall  not  run  short  of  information. 

A  second  task  of  education  in  a  policy  of  social 
construction  is  to  teach  the  use  of  the  mind  and 
body.  It  is  of  little  avail  to  have  a  body  unless  one 
knows  how  to  use  it.     Most  of  us  misuse  and  fail 


CHILDHOOD  49 

to  use  our  eyes,  our  ears,  our  hands,  our  backs,  our 
tongues  and  teeth,  our  lungs  and  diaphragms,  our 
legs,  our  skin.  For  a  million  years  or  so,  no  doubt, 
we  traveled  on  all  fours,  as  babies  still  do,  and  now 
nature  fails  us  sometimes  when  we  try  to  stand  up- 
right. For  a  million  years  or  so  salvation  on  earth 
depended  on  ability  to  distinguish  friend  from  foe 
at  a  great  distance.  Now,  when  the  objects  of  our 
interest  and  solicitude  are  nearly  always  at  eighteen 
inches  from  the  eye  instead  of  a  mile,  we  find  our- 
selves handicapped  by  an  optical  instrument  fitted 
for  the  distant  but  not  for  the  near  vision.  We 
subject  ourselves  to  eye-strain,  and  have  head- 
aches, curved  spines,  and  ill  temper  in  consequence. 

No  other  mechanism  in  the  world,  we  are  often 
assured,  is  so  continuously  and  flagrantly  abused — 
from  ignorance,  from  obstinacy,  from  carelessness, 
from  parasitic  enemies,  from  indulgence  of  its  own 
eccentricities — as  the  human  body.  Education 
for  efficiency  implies  instruction  as  to  these  ele- 
mentary things:  not  anatomy  and  physiology, 
though  those  are  useful;  but  cleanliness,  respect 
for  bodily  functions,  coordination  of  muscles,  re- 
pose of  nerves.  Hygiene  in  all  its  branches  is  the 
first  element  in  social  education. 

But  the  mind  also  is  useless  save  as  we  have 
learned  how  to  use  it.  To  impart  information  is 
no  more  to  give  the  mastery  of  the  mind  than  to 
impart  food  is  to  give  the  mastery  of  the  body. 
Certain  drills  are  necessary  to  make  the  mind  rapid 


50  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

and  accurate.  Certain  processes  are  necessary  to 
develop  observation  and  the  critical  faculty. 
Other  exercises  are  useful  in  cultivating  the  mem- 
ory and  the  imagination.  But,  above  all,  in  a 
policy  of  social  construction,  the  educational  sys- 
tem must  be  successful  in  planting,  watering,  and 
securing  increase  in  the  power  of  forming  economic 
judgments,  in  the  power  of  estimating  values  as 
higher  and  lower,  of  comparing  rightly  future 
pleasures  with  those  of  the  present,  the  permanent 
with  the  fleeting,  the  spiritual  with  the  material. 
Right  reasoning  about  what  can  be  attained  by  a 
given  effort,  and  what  the  satisfaction  thus  at- 
tained is  really  worth,  as  compared  with  other 
possible  results  from  the  same  effort — this,  I  take 
it,  is  a  prime  function  of  social  education. 

One  other  obvious  end  of  education  may  be 
named  along  with  the  imparting  of  information 
and  the  development  of  capacity  to  use  the  mind 
and  the  body.  That  is  the  forming  of  good  physi- 
cal, mental,  and  moral  habits.  The  economic 
reasoning  just  now  referred  to  is  a  conscious  and 
sometimes  a  slow  and  painful  process.  But  after 
a  while,  if  the  processes  of  our  reasoning  are  sound, 
a  particular  judgment  has  been  formed  so  clearly, 
or  so  often,  or  is  so  buttressed  by  authority,  that  it 
is  accepted  as  a  moral  judgment.  It  obtains  an 
ethical  sanction.  The  conscious  reasoning  process 
is  no  longer  necessary.  Time  is  saved.  Effort  is 
saved.     Wear  and  tear  of  tissue  and  vital  energy 


CHILDHOOD  51 

are  saved.  No  doubt  honesty  was  once  the  best 
policy.  There  may  be  borderlands  where  it  is  so 
still.  But  for  us  and  our  children  honesty  has 
ceased  to  be  a  policy.  It  is  an  instinct,  a  habit  of 
mind,  an  economic  judgment  so  often  made,  so 
clearly  established,  so  authoritatively  attested, 
that  it  offends  rather  than  helps  us  to  allude  to  its 
material  advantages.  The  farther  we  can  go  in 
this  direction  of  economizing  the  reasoning  process, 
the  more  instinctive  and  immediate  right  courses  of 
conduct  can  become,  the  more  we  shall  be  able  to 
extend  our  field  of  operations,  the  more  complete 
will  be  our  conquest  of  nature,  and  the  more  pro- 
ductive will  be  the  actual  expenditure  of  energy  in 
satisfying  the  higher  and  more  complex  wants. 

This  restatement  of  the  elementary  aims  of 
education  may  seem  to  specialists  in  the  theory  of 
education  so  obvious  as  to  be  trite,  or  so  incomplete 
as  to  be  fantastic.  The  school  system  to  the  social 
economist  is  an  instrument  like  any  other  of  social 
construction.  Education  conceived  as  the  means 
of  carrying  civilization  forward,  as  the  conscious 
link  between  the  generations  of  workers  and  users 
of  wealth,  must  do  at  least  these  things :  Pass  on  the 
information;  make  the  mind  and  body  fit  instru- 
ments of  satisfying  the  wants  of  man;  encourage 
those  habits  and  instincts  which  economize  power 
and  promote  the  social  welfare.  Put  in  terms  of 
social  problems,  the  school  must  aid  in  preventing 
poverty  by  making  men  more  efficient;  in  prevent- 


52  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

ing  disease  by  making  men  strong  and  well;  in 
preventing  crime  by  making  men  law-abiding  in 
spirit  and  instinctively  aware  of  the  rights  of  others; 
in  preventing  violence  by  inoculating  against  self- 
righteousness  and  brutality. 

Childhood  is  the  time  of  life  in  which  the  school 
has  its  great  chance.  Education,  we  cannot  too 
often  repeat,  does  not  end  then.  Education,  like 
industry  and  art  and  religion  and  friendly  inter- 
course, is  really  one  of  the  permanent  and  serious 
interests  of  life,  constantly  going  on  under  changing 
forms,  until  the  life  of  the  spirit,  whether  gradually 
or  suddenly,  is  lost  to  our  ken.  But  in  childhood 
there  is  hardly  any  rival  interest;  for  play  and 
occupation,  art  and  religion,  home  life  and  school 
life,  are  in  childhood  all  a  part  of  education.  The 
school,  although  not  exhausting  its  content,  is  the 
institutional  embodiment  of  this  idea  of  education. 

PHYSICAL  WELL-BEING 
Coming  more  directly  to  some  of  the  social  prob- 
lems of  childhood  centering  in  the  school,  it  is  nec- 
essary to  discover  and  remedy  the  physical  defects 
of  children.  Some  of  these  are  due  to  neglect  of 
the  pre-natal,  natal,  or  post-natal  problems  of  in- 
fancy, to  overworked  and  undernourished  parents, 
or  to  ignorance  of  the  conditions  essential  to  a  right 
start  for  children.  Others  may  not  show  them- 
selves, or  may  not  be  remediable,  until  earlier  in- 
fancy is  past.     Medical  inspection  of  school  chil- 


CHILDHOOD  53 

dren  to  discover  and  correct  such  defects  is  becom- 
ing so  common  that  any  school  system  which  does 
not  provide  for  it  is  recognized  as  antiquated. 

Many  schools,  I  regret  to  say,  are  antiquated. 
Our  standards,  our  common  notions  of  what  is  the 
right  and  reasonable  thing,  move  much  faster  than 
our  practice,  which  is  dependent  on  appropria- 
tions and  administrative  details  and  unlucky  acci- 
dents and  the  slow  process  of  bringing  large  num- 
bers of  people  to  understand  what  is  to  be  done 
precisely  and  how  precisely  to  do  it. 

Among  the  common  features  of  medical  school 
inspection  and  treatment  of  defects  are  the  removal 
of  adenoids  and,  when  necessary,  of  tonsils;  the 
correction  of  astigmatism  by  carefully  fitted  glasses 
— not  such  as  can  be  picked  up  cheaply  from  a  ten- 
cent  counter  or  a  peddler's  pack,  but  such  as  are 
found  by  a  competent  refractionist  to  be  required; 
the  correction  of  spinal  curvature — by  a  desk  ad- 
justment when  that  is  sufficient,  by  a  mechanical 
appliance  when  necessary — and  orthopedic  cor- 
rection and  treatment  of  other  crippling  disabili- 
ties; the  cleaning  of  scalps;  the  isolation  of  in- 
fectious skin  and  eye  diseases  and  proper  treat- 
ment of  the  victims ;  the  feeding  of  undernourished 
children;  and  the  exposure  of  all  to  fresh  air,  but 
especially  open-air  classes  for  those  who  are  anemic 
and  susceptible  and  so  easily  poisoned  by  foul  air. 
Equally  justified  with  such  medical  inspection  is 
instruction  in  sex  hygiene,  very  generally  and  very 


54  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

delicately  in  the  schools,  very  explicitly  and  very 
drastically  when  that  is  necessary  in  the  home  or 
the  doctor's  office.  The  prevention  of  venereal 
disease,  prostitution,  and  their  consequences  in 
society  rests  upon  the  foundation-stone  of  instruc- 
tion in  childhood.  The  instruction  which  provides 
such  a  foundation  is  not  instruction  in  sex  pathol- 
ogy or  in  the  ways  of  vice.  The  instruction  appro- 
priate to  childhood  and  potent  to  make  or  keep  the 
coming  generation  secure  is  instruction  in  hygiene, 
which  is  health,  in  the  ways  of  health  and  life,  in 
the  wholesome  and  serene  enjoyment  which  comes 
from  industry,  self-restraint,  and  a  social  conscience. 


ECONOMIC  EFFICIENCY 

The  discovery  and  cure  of  physical  defects  and  a 
hygienic  culture  and  discipline  have  characterized 
the  progress  of  education  in  the  past  decades.  The 
next  is  to  see  the  transformation  of  the  curriculum 
in  the  direction  of  elasticity,  with  more  recognition 
of  actual  existing  conditions.  A  more  complete 
linking  of  the  schools  to  the  future  working  life 
of  the  children  is  one  of  the  most  imperative  tasks 
of  the  teacher  at  the  present  moment.  This  is  to 
be  done  not  for  the  sake  of  industry  but  for  the 
sake  of  education;  not  cheap  but  valuable  labor  is 
its  end.  It  is  no  business  of  the  schools  to  furnish 
cheap  and  skilful  hands  for  the  mills  if  this  means 
that  they  are  to  be  exploited  by  employers.     But 


CHILDHOOD  55 

the  children  are,  after  all,  to  grow  up  to  be  workers: 
professional,  commercial,  industrial,  agricultural 
workers.  Their  school  should  from  the  beginning 
aim  to  make  them  efficient  and  skilful  workers. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  specialization  for  a  life  career 
should  begin  in  the  kindergarten.  Trade  schools  and 
vocational  guidance  are  not  for  childhood,  but  for 
adolescence.  A  definite  relation  between  the  school 
and  the  future  active  life  of  the  child,  however,  long 
antedates  the  trade  school.  Useful  work  and  ra- 
tional enjoyment  of  life  are  from  the  beginning  the 
ends  in  view.  Both  at  long  range,  which  is  culture, 
and  at  shorter  range,  which  is  training,  the  schools 
must  have  the  occupations  of  the  community — of 
the  nation  and  the  world  also,  but  more  especially 
of  the  community — in  their  mind's  eye.  Peri- 
patetic teachers  in  the  home  kitchens,  perhaps 
helping  to  transform  the  kitchens  in  a  little  while 
to  cooperative  enterprises,  may,  for  example,  be 
one  of  the  next  innovations. 

The  cultural  or  disciplinary  processes  in  the 
schools  are  not  to  be  undervalued.  It  is  the  whole 
of  the  accumulated  results  of  civilization  that  we 
are  to  pass  on:  its  noble  pleasures,  its  visions  and 
ideals.  But  these  things  cannot  stand  alone. 
They  can  no  longer  stand  on  slavery  or  serfdom  or 
an  unmitigated  wage  system.  They  must  stand 
on  democracy,  political  and  industrial.  The  work- 
ers must  come  into  possession  of  them,  and  to  this 
end    they    must    become    cooperative    capitalists. 


56  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

A  socialist  congressman-elect  has  recently  quoted 
Lasalle's  saying  that  the  proletarian  workers  and 
the  intellectuals  must  unite,  and  has  quoted  it  to 
disagree,  saying  that  the  workers  must  themselves 
become  intellectual.  The  workers  of  the  future 
must  be  efficient,  not  under  compulsion,  but  under 
leadership  and  direction.  They  must  be  able  to 
use  their  minds  no  less  than  their  bodies,  and  neither 
minds  nor  bodies  in  mutilated  fragments. 

CIVIC  NURTURE 
Hygienic  training  for  health,  then,  and  economic 
education  for  efficiency,  are  the  first  two  planks  in  a 
policy  of  social  education.  The  third  is  civic  cul- 
ture, training  in  self-government  and  aid  in  ap- 
preciating the  nature  of  social  relations — social 
obligations,  social  rights  and  duties — the  social  life 
in  its  entirety.  This  is  no  more  the  function  of 
so-called  civics  courses,  dealing  with  the  framework 
of  political  government  as  it  happens  to  exist  in  a 
particular  community,  than  of  those  dealing  with 
other  subjects,  such  as  history,  literature,  and 
biology.  It  is  a  by-product,  like  ethics,  of  which 
it  is  a  part,  of  nearly  all  good  teaching.  If  the  new 
conception  of  government  as  a  democratic  coopera- 
tive enterprise  can  be  planted  in  the  mind,  this  will 
help,  but  society  does  not  consist  merely  of  its 
courts  and  legislatures.  Failure  to  recognize  this 
has  seemed  to  me  the  great  weakness  of  those 
Junior  Republics  in  which  the  whole  life  centers 


CHILDHOOD  57 

around  the  sheriff  and  the  judge.  The  school 
must  recognize  that  many  a  voluntary  agency,  like 
a  trade  union,  a  savings  bank,  a  chamber  of  com- 
merce, a  church  or  synagogue — the  family  at  one 
extreme  and  the  human  brotherhood  at  the  other — 
all  express  social  relations,  and  that  any  one  of 
them,  at  a  given  moment,  under  particular  circum- 
stances, may  have  greater  significance  for  the  in- 
dividual than  the  state  itself.  To  be  a  good  citizen 
is  essential.  One  cannot  put  it  more  strongly. 
But  to  be  a  good  neighbor,  to  be  a  creditor  in  the 
community  and  not  a  social  debtor,  to  live  a  full 
life  in  all  appropriate  social  relations,  is  an  even 
higher  and  more  inspiring  ideal. 

This  social  ideal  has  in  it  a  dynamic  element. 
The  school  which  fits  into  a  sound  scheme  of  social 
construction  is  not  to  pass  on  a  civilization  per- 
fected and  unchanged.  It  is  no  slavish  instrument 
of  things  as  they  are.  It  assumes  a  progressive 
social  order  and  seeks  to  implant  a  divine  discon- 
tent, an  evolutionary  spirit,  a  germ  of  that  love  of 
liberty  and  opportunity  which  has  so  often  de- 
stroyed the  old  and  outworn  to  make  place  for  the 
new.  It  is  conservative  only  of  what  continuously 
stands  the  acid  test  of  present  needs  and  forward- 
looking  plans. 

ELEMENTARY  CONDITIONS  OF  SOCIAL  EDUCATION 

The  features,  then,  of  social  education  are  civic 

or  social  nurture,  economic  efficiency,  and  physical 


58  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

well-being.  Consider  some  of  the  very  elementary 
corollaries. 

First  there  must  be  room  for  all  the  children; 
and  the  seats  must  be  where  the  children  are. 
There  should  not  be  seventy  thousand  children  in 
Texas  who  have  no  chance  to  go  to  school,  nor  forty 
thousand  in  New  York  City  on  half-time,  while 
there  are  fifty  thousand  more  seats  in  all  the  school- 
houses  of  the  city  than  there  are  children  to  be  pro- 
vided for.  A  prerequisite  for  this  is  such  a  col- 
lection of  population  statistics  and  interpretation 
of  them  as  will  rightly  forecast  the  location  of 
buildings  to  meet  future  needs,  and  such  liberality 
of  expenditure  as  will  actually  meet  them.  A 
permanent  census  or  registration  of  all  the  popula- 
tion, corrected  to  date  by  recording  all  removals, 
as  well  as  births  and  deaths,  would  be  the  most 
satisfactory  and  economical  method  of  securing 
such  data.  All  such  calculations  will  be  more 
easily  made  and  more  nearly  correct  after  every 
city  has  its  definite  plan,  its  particular  zones  for 
business,  for  manufacturing,  and  for  residences  of 
different  kinds. 

In  the  commodious  and  well-placed  school-build- 
ings there  must  be  an  abundance  of  fresh  air.  In 
this  climate  some  of  them  might  be  built  without 
glass  in  the  windows,  like  open  sleeping  porches. 
The  rosy  cheeks  of  healthy  children  would  be  their 
ornament,  and  joy  and  zest  in  work  the  guarantee 
stamp  of  their  quality. 


CHILDHOOD  59 

The  next  essential  is  a  course  of  study,  organized, 
as  the  New  York  Committee  on  School  Inquiry 
puts  it,*  around  human  problems,  and  made  simple 
and  elastic  enough  to  permit  of  differentiation  to 
meet  the  needs  of  different  nationalities  and  groups. 

The  next  is  a  corps  of  trained  and  competent 
teachers,  capable  of  carrying  such  a  simple  and 
elastic  curriculum,  of  differentiating  and  adapting 
it,  of  criticizing  and  overhauling  it  when  necessary, 
of  keeping  it  alive  and  elastic  and  discovering  from 
time  to  time  those  human  problems  around  which 
the  curriculum  is  to  be  organized.  Politics  has  no 
legitimate  place  in  this  selection  of  teachers,  of 
course.  Security  of  tenure  and  the  easy  elimina- 
tion of  demonstrably  unfit  are  of  equal  importance. 
Whether  the  teachers  are  women  or  men,  adequate 
pay  to  justify  professional  preparation  and  to  meet 
the  increasing  competition  of  other  callings  is 
necessary  in  the  interests  of  the  schools. 

Specialized  instruction  for  individuals  who  are 
above  or  below  par  is  quite  as  justified  as  average 
instruction  for  average  children.  It  is  contrary  to 
the  interests  of  society  that  genius  should  remain 
undetected  and  unencouraged,  just  as  it  is  wasteful 
and  absurd  for  backward  children  and  defective 
children  to  be  treated  as  if  they  were  not  defective 
or  backward.  Fit  and  appropriate  opportunity 
for  each  according  to  his  needs:   the  blind  and  the 

*  A  Committee  of  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportion- 
ment, 1913. 


60  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

deaf,  the  crippled  and  nervous,  the  exceptionally 
gifted  and  well  prepared,  the  clear  thinkers  and 
the  hard  workers.  To  subject  all  to  the  same  un- 
differentiated, uniform,  mechanically  prescribed 
routine  squares  neither  with  efficiency  principles 
nor  with  common  sense. 

Ungraded  classes,  sufficient  in  number  to  give 
accommodation  to  all  the  defective  children  who 
are  in  the  schools  and  cannot  be  more  appropriately 
removed  to  institutions,  are  an  obvious  advantage 
to  the  children  in  them  and  to  the  classes  from  which 
they  are  removed. 

It  has  been  reported  that  in  New  York  City  more 
than  twenty  thousand  slow  children  were  cared  for 
in  so-called  "rapid  progress  classes,"  in  which 
they  have  the  advantages  of  skilled  teachers  and 
abridged  and  amended  courses  of  study.  Whether 
there  is  a  place  for  the  other  kind  of  rapid  progress 
classes,  with  enriched  and  amended  courses  of 
study,  not  for  slow  but  for  bright  children,  may  be 
a  question.  But  certainly  in  some  way  there  should 
be  recognition  and  encouragement  of  their  extra 
capacities  and  their  more  rapid  promotion  within 
reasonable  limits  should  be  facilitated. 

Perhaps  there  is  danger  of  exaggerating  the  im- 
portance of  the  school  as  compared  with  less  or- 
ganized, less  formal  influences.  There  is  always 
danger  of  taking  any  human  institution  too  se- 
riously. Charities  and  schools  especially  are  all 
the  better  for  occasional  blasts  of  satire,  chaffing 


CHILDHOOD  61 

illuminating  criticism,  which,  without  either  adula- 
tion or  prejudice,  helps,  as  it  were,  to  restore  a  due 
sense  of  proportion. 

Play  belongs  with  class-room  and  home  life  as  a 
serious  feature  of  child  life.  And  not  merely  regu- 
lated, organized,  artificially  stimulated  play,  but 
spontaneous,  natural,  unwatched  play.  It  is  a 
famous  playground  director  who  tells  of  a  startling 
proposition  made  by  a  boy  at  the  end  of  a  very  big 
and  successful  play  program — I  am  not  sure  that 
it  was  not  a  "pageant":  "Now  let's  have  some 
fun!"  What  children  need  in  this  direction  is  a 
place  to  play,  time  to  play,  and  health.  I  have  all 
possible  sympathy  with  the  so-called  playground 
movement.  It  recognizes  that  city  children  do  not 
have  a  place  to  play,  and  that  modern  civilization 
must,  by  conscious  effort,  restore  the  glorious 
privileges  of  which  its  own  cruder  stages  have 
robbed  the  children  and  the  adults.  The  condi- 
tions are  changed  from  the  old  days.  Leisure 
comes  now,  like  employment,  to  masses  of  men  and 
of  children,  and  some  element  of  organization  is 
necessary  to  its  profitable  use.  But  we  are  experi- 
menting only.  Play  festivals  and  pageants,  folk- 
dances  and  gymnastics,  athletic  leagues  and  com- 
petitive school  games,  are  but  interesting  experi- 
ments, full  of  promise  and  amply  justified  so  long 
as  we  do  not  fail  to  leave  open  the  free  competition 
of  the  street  and  the  open  field. 

Health  and  nurture,  through  home  and  school 


62  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

and  playmates,  through  religious  and  moral  and 
social  training,  through  responsible  individual 
direction  and  through  less  direct  but  genuine  com- 
munity action,  are  the  aims  of  a  policy  of  social 
construction  in  normal  childhood,  as  a  good  hered- 
ity and  physical  well-being  are  the  aims  at  birth 
and  in  infancy.  I  have  an  idea  that  in  these  re- 
spects those  whom  we  call  the  poor — the  tenement 
house  and  alley  population  in  our  cities — to-day 
are  rather  better  off  than  were  the  children  of  the 
comfortably  well-to-do,  say  fifty  years  ago. 

All  parents  and  relatives  who  have  a  family 
standing,  all  family  physicians  and  public  health 
physicians  and  nurses,  all  teachers  and  pastors,  all 
neighbors  and  associates,  all  who  govern  in  the 
community,  and  all  who  shape  its  public  opinions, 
are  among  the  builders  of  the  child  life  of  the  na- 
tion, individually  more  or  less  responsible  and 
jointly  fully  responsible  for  the  death-rate,  the 
incorrigibility  rate,  the  efficiency  rate  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  nation. 

DEPENDENT  CHILDREN 
Among  our  thirty-one  million  children*  there 
are  a  few — something  like  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand — for  whom  society  has  a  greater  responsi- 
bility than  for  the  others,  a  different  kind  of  re- 
sponsibility, because  their  parents  are  dead  or 
unable  to  provide  for  them  or  unfit  to  do  so,  and 
*  Total  population  under  sixteen. 


CHILDHOOD  63 

this  inability  or  unfitness  has  been  brought  to 
light  and  clearly  established  by  court  action  or 
investigation  of  some  kind  which  has  led  to  the 
acceptance  of  the  children  in  institutions  or  in  fos- 
ter families  under  the  oversight  of  child-placing 
agencies.  There  are,  no  doubt,  some  thousands 
more  for  whom  parents  are  really  unable  or  unfit 
to  provide  without  assistance,  but  those,  we  may 
assume,  are  in  their  homes  or  at  school,  somewhat 
neglected,  it  may  be,  less  fully  nourished  and  less 
carefully  taught  and  trained,  it  may  be,  than  their 
normal  life  demands,  but  still  sharing  in  the  rising 
standards  of  child  care  in  the  community,  not  en- 
tirely neglected  by  their  parents,  and  discovered 
from  time  to  time  by  relief  agencies,  by  the  church, 
by  a  settlement,  or  by  a  good  Samaritan.  Of  com- 
plete neglect  by  everybody,  state  and  church  and 
neighborhood,  there  are  certainly  plenty  of  cases, 
both  in  cities  and  in  remote  country  places.  And 
for  such  exhortations  and  proddings  and  demon- 
strations as  are  furnished  by  child  welfare  exhibits 
and  like  agencies  there  is  abundant  need. 

One  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  children  who 
have  been  left  orphans,  or  taken  away  from  their 
parents  for  any  reason,  present,  however,  special 
problems:  the  problems  most  often  discussed  in 
conferences  of  charities  when  children  are  under 
consideration.  Dependent  children  are  for  the 
most  part  in  orphan  asylums,  congregate  institu- 
tions under  private  or  church  control  of  the  type 


64  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

familiar  in  all  the  older  states:  although,  as  the 
Census  Bureau  tells  us  in  its  special  report  on  benev- 
olent institutions,  there  is  an  increasing  number  of 
state  detention  homes  where  dependent  and  de- 
linquent children  are  cared  for  pending  final  dis- 
position by  the  juvenile  courts;  of  receiving  homes 
under  the  conduct  of  home-finding  organizations; 
of  state  public  schools,  intermediary  between  the 
orphanage  and  the  reformatory;  and  of  training 
homes  and  schools  of  many  kinds  which  practically 
are  educational  institutions.  In  New  York  State 
in  19 10  one  hundred  and  forty-four  institutions  re- 
port an  average  number  of  two  hundred  and  ten 
children  in  each  institution,  and  of  these  twenty  are 
conducted  on  what  is  known  as  the  cottage  system. 
In  Maryland  there  were  thirty-three  institutions 
with  an  average  number  of  seventy-five — two  of 
these  thirty-three  being  on  the  cottage  system. 
I  hope  that  number  has  increased  since  then,  as  the 
change  in  architecture  from  barracks  to  cottage, 
although  expensive,  represents  a  determined  effort 
to  get  away  from  wholesale  methods  to  retail; 
from  uniformity  to  individuality;  from  regimen- 
tation to  something  like  family  informality;  from 
the  impossible  to  the  still  difficult  but  not  im- 
possible substitute  for  a  home. 

Aside  from  the  gradual — very  gradual — intro- 
duction of  the  cottage  system,  the  two  marked 
tendencies  to  which  the  census  report  calls  atten- 
tion are  the  assumption  by  some  state  authority  of 


CHILDHOOD  65 

supervision  over  benevolent  institutions,  including 
those  for  children,  and  the  extension  of  the  super- 
visory care  of  institutions  over  children  placed  by 
them  in  family  homes  or  elsewhere.  The  report 
calls  attention  to  the  close  relation  between  the 
extension  of  the  cottage  system  and  the  emphasis 
laid  in  some  states  on  county  homes  and  general 
state  supervision. 

Children's  institutions  present  a  number  of  very 
serious  and  very  difficult  problems,  about  some  of 
which  unhappy  controversies  have  raged,  fanned  by 
religious  bigotry,  and  representing,  even  when  free 
from  acrimony  or  misunderstanding,  very  sharp 
and  fundamental  differences  in  the  theory  of  social 
construction. 

The  first  of  these  is  as  to  the  right  of  the  institu- 
tion to  exist  at  all.  A  fairly  good  case  can  be  made 
out  against  it.  It  is  better  that  children  should  be 
kept  alive  in  an  institution  than  left  to  die  of  ex- 
posure and  starvation,  but  the  alternative  to  the 
institution  is  frequently  not  starvation,  but  care 
by  the  mother,  or  care  in  a  well-selected  and  care- 
fully supervised  boarding  home.  What  if  all  the 
hundred  thousand  children  now  in  orphan  asylums 
— only  one  child  in  every  three  hundred  of  the 
population  under  sixteen — could  be  kept  with 
their  own  mothers,  or  with  relatives,  or  with  foster 
parents,  or  even  with  paid  care-takers  in  a  boarding 
home,  at  very  little  more  expense  than  it  costs  to 
build   and   maintain   the  institutions?     These  re- 


66  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

flections  haunt  the  memory  and  make  uncomfort- 
able the  conscience  of  all  who  have  ever  really  seen 
institutional  children. 

In  some  places  institutions  seem  to  be  necessary. 
In  New  York  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  we  could 
entirely  displace  them.  Our  conditions  are  ab- 
normal and  all  but  impossible.  Immigration,  con- 
gestion, religious  interests,  a  great  investment  in 
institutional  plants,  and  an  existing  subsidy  system 
conspire  to  put  what  are  thought  to  be  insuperable 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  any  radical  substitution  of 
placing  and  boarding  out  for  institutions,  and  even 
make  difficult  any  general  substitution  of  the  cot- 
tage for  the  congregate  system.  It  seems  quixotic 
to  be  advocating  any  change  there.  Reforms  and 
improvements  in  the  existing  system  are  possible 
and  will  surely  be  made,  but  there  is  little  prospect 
of  retracing  the  steps  by  which  that  system  has 
been  established  and  intrenched.  But  seeing  it 
thus  in  full  operation,  and  recognizing  that  its 
permanence  there  seems  probable,  I  bear  my  testi- 
mony in  any  community  not  so  situated,  that  it  is 
wasteful  of  child  life,  wasteful  of  educational  op- 
portunities, wasteful  of  economic  efficiency  and 
character,  promotive  often  of  a  spirit  the  opposite 
of  law-abiding,  and  this  because  it  does  not  give  an 
experience  to  the  child  in  natural  family  and  neigh- 
borhood relationships,  does  not  teach  the  value 
and  use  of  money  in  exchange,  does  not  give  an 
opportunity  for  the  development  of  self-reliance 


CHILDHOOD  67 

and  self -direction,  does  not  gradually  initiate  the 
child  into  the  every-day  routine  of  free  citizenship, 
but  necessarily  represses  his  budding  individuality, 
limits  and  controls  the  exercise  of  his  judgment  as 
of  his  body,  contracts  his  vision,  mutilates  his  facul- 
ties, distorts  his  sense  of  values. 

I  have  recently  had  occasion  to  make  an  inspec- 
tion of  an  institution — not  a  large  one,  such  as  you 
think  of  as  typical  of  New  York,  but  neverthe- 
less distinctly  an  institutional  institution.  It  was 
sanitary,  light,  airy,  and  well  built.  There  were 
schoolrooms,  play-rooms  and  gymnasium,  excellent 
kitchen,  laundry,  bakery,  and  dormitories.  There 
were  humane  managers  and  a  visiting  physician. 
They  had  twenty  acres  of  land  for  gardens  and 
playground,  and  the  kindly  personal  interest  of  the 
members  of  a  large  association  to  which  the  home 
bears  somewhat  informal  official  relation. 

And  yet,  under  all  these  favorable  conditions, 
the  children  were  not  receiving  the  physical  or  the 
educational  or  the  religious  care  which  is  childhood's 
birthright.  Even  yet  the  wasted  opportunities 
in  the  lives  of  that  hundred  children  appall  and 
oppress  me.  Even  yet  the  dull  unresponsiveness 
of  that  group  of  children  weighs  upon  me, — though 
we  did  not  leave  them  until  we  had  broken  through 
it  and  made  them  laugh  and  their  eyes  dance  over 
the  prospect  of  a  match  ball  game  and  other  ideas 
which  they  could  take  in  and  respond  to.  The 
four  hours  of  that  day  spent  in  their  company  on 


68  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

serious  business  have  lifted  for  me  a  little  way  a 
curtain  behind  which  there  lurk  too  much  dark- 
ness, too  much  community  neglect,  too  much  in- 
difference, too  much  ostrich-like  concealment  of  an 
age-long,  age-unsolved  problem. 

Next  after  the  question  as  to  the  legitimacy  of 
the  institution  itself  is  that  of  the  financial  system 
upon  which  it  is  conducted. 

Privately  endowed  orphan  asylums  would  be  the 
most  dangerous  of  all  perpetually  endowed  institu- 
tions. An  institution  which  is  conducted  by  the 
state  or  the  city  and  supported  by  taxpayers,  being 
obliged  to  justify  itself  from  year  to  year  and  sub- 
ject to  inspection  by  a  competent  state  board  of 
charities,  is  far  less  apt  to  fall  behind  the  educa- 
tional ideals  and  standards  of  the  community. 
A  small  church  home,  caring  for  the  children  in  a 
particular  neighborhood,  visited  by  church  mem- 
bers and  supported  by  their  contributions, — al- 
though likely  to  be  inadequately  equipped, — may 
be  free  from  serious  abuses.  A  modest  receiving 
home,  in  which  children  are  kept  for  a  brief  time 
for  observation  and  study,  prior  to  placement  in  a 
foster  home,  is  apt  to  remain  wholesome  and  home- 
like by  the  very  constant  movement  of  its  meager 
population,  by  the  non-institutional  influences  of 
the  larger  work  of  which  it  is  but  an  incident. 

It  is  the  large  institution  under  private  or  religi- 
ous auspices,  managed  by  a  self-perpetuating  or 
appointed  board,  but  supported  by  state  or  muni- 


CHILDHOOD  69 

cipal  appropriations,  which  is  most  difficult  to  keep 
human  and  educational,  to  keep  within  reasonable 
bounds  as  to  size,  or  within  reasonable  bounds  as 
to  its  subtle  influence  on  state  and  municipal 
affairs.  The  subsidy  or  contract  system  continu- 
ously grows  by  what  it  feeds  on.  It  represents  an 
unsound  principle  of  divorcing  control  from  sup- 
port. One  body  directs  the  affairs  of  the  institu- 
tion; another  pays  the  bills.  The  result  is  a  divi- 
sion of  responsibility  and  neglect  of  the  child. 
In  such  an  institution  children  are  apt  to  be  re- 
ceived irresponsibly,  eagerly,  without  any  due  sense 
of  the  corresponding  obligations.  From  them  go 
disciplined,  in  a  narrow  sense  religiously  instructed, 
but  still  half-educated  children.  Where  the  sub- 
sidy system  is  not  already  firmly  established  it 
should  be  shunned,  for  it  is  demoralizing  and  sub- 
versive of  the  most  elementary  child-caring  prin- 
ciples. 

The  chief  defense  of  the  institution,  aside  from 
financial  economy,  in  which,  for  a  given  number  of 
children,  it  has  an  advantage  over  cottage  homes  or 
a  boarding  system,  is  in  its  superiority  on  the  side 
of  religious  and  moral  instruction.  In  view  of  the 
fact  that  these  children  are  deprived  of  their  nat- 
ural home  influences  there  is  force  in  the  contention 
that  to  place  them  in  a  state  school,  organized  like 
the  public  day  schools,  without  religious  instruction, 
would  be  unjustified  and  abnormal.  Foster  and 
boarding  homes,  or  at  least  small  cottage  institu- 


70  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

tions,  could  largely  meet  this  requirement,  how- 
ever, if  we  were  willing  to  pay  the  price.  The 
question,  therefore,  comes  back  to  that  of  cost  and 
to  our  estimate  of  the  value  of  a  natural  home  life 
as  against  an  artificial,  hot-house  environment. 

I  make  no  attack  upon  any  particular  type  of 
institution,  much  less  upon  those  of  any  particular 
church.  I  stand  upon  the  conclusions  of  the  White 
House  Conference  of  1909: 

1.  Except  in  unusual  circumstances,  the 
home  should  not  be  broken  up  for  reasons  of 
poverty,  but  only  for  considerations  of  in- 
efficiency or  immorality. 

2.  The  most  important  and  valuable  philan- 
thropic work  is  not  the  curative,  but  the  pre- 
ventive. We  urge  upon  all  friends  of  children 
.  .  .  to  improve  the  conditions  surround- 
ing child  life. 

3.  As  to  the  children  who  for  sufficient  rea- 
sons must  be  removed  from  their  own  homes, 
or  who  have  no  homes,  it  is  desirable  that,  if 
normal  in  mind  and  body  and  not  requiring 
special  training,  they  should  be  cared  for  in 
families  whenever  practicable. 

4.  Institutions  should  be  on  the  cottage 
plan.  .  .  .  Existing  congregate  institu- 
tions should  so  classify  their  inmates  and 
segregate  them  into  groups  as  to  secure  as 
many  of  the  benefits  of  the  cottage  system 
as  possible,  and  should  look  forward  to  the 
adoption  of  the  cottage  type  when  new  build- 
ings are  constructed. 


CHILDHOOD  71 

5.  The  state  should  inspect  the  work  of  all 
agencies  which  care  for  dependent  children. 

6.  Educational  work  of  institutions  and 
agencies  caring  for  dependent  children  should 
be  supervised  by  state  educational  authorities. 

7.  Complete  histories  of  dependent  children 
and  their  parents  should  be  recorded  for  guid- 
ance of  child-caring  agencies. 

8.  Every  needy  child  should  receive  proper 
medical  and  surgical  attention  and  be  instructed 
in  health  and  hygiene. 

The  placing  of  dependent  children  in  foster 
homes  has  its  own  difficulties,  dangers,  and  abuses. 
Whether  in  free  foster  homes  or  in  boarding  homes, 
placed-out  children  and  the  families  in  which  they 
are  placed  require  supervision,  expert,  efficient, 
conscientious,  and  continuous.  If  these  children 
are  to  be  protected  from  exploitation,  taught  and 
nurtured  as  wards  of  the  state  should  be,  to  have 
a  chance  at  the  vocation  for  which  they  are  fitted, 
to  be  developed  into  physically  sound,  useful  citi- 
zens and  neighbors,  the  state  or  the  placing-out 
agency  must  be  prepared  to  meet  the  expense  and 
do  the  work  required  to  this  end. 

We  are  justified  in  accepting  in  most  matters  the 
usual  standards  of  a  community  in  which  the  chil- 
dren are  placed,  provided  they  are  placed  in  a  com- 
munity which  has  normally  high  standards.  But 
through  reports  and  inspections  and  a  readiness 
to  resort,  when  necessary,  to  disciplinary  measures, 


72  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

including  the  summary  removal  of  children  for 
cause  and  their  replacement  as  often  as  is  necessary, 
the  enforcement  of  reasonable  standards  should  be 
assured.  We  have  at  present  in  the  child-caring 
agencies  of  the  country  the  great  advantage  of  free 
competition,  a  generous  rivalry  between  institu- 
tions and  placing  and  boarding-out  societies  or 
institutions.  We  are  not  far  enough  along  to  de- 
cide that  either  should  be  abolished.  The  new  and 
better  ones,  or  the  old  ones  made  better,  should  not 
suffer  on  their  account.  The  institutions  have  an 
advantage  in  being  able  to  organize  their  medical, 
optical,  dental,  orthopedic,  and  other  services  in 
ways  that  would  be  impracticable  for  isolated  chil- 
dren, scattered  in  many  families.  They  can  experi- 
ment with  vocational  training,  trade  schools,  do- 
mestic science,  and  so  on,  adopting  methods  which 
are  tried  and  found  satisfactory.  They  can  or- 
ganize, as  it  were,  the  whole  life  of  the  child:  edu- 
cational, religious,  social;  so  far  at  least  as  the  re- 
sources and  limitations  of  the  institution  permit. 
These  advantages,  which  are  shared  in  part  by 
cottage-type  and  congregate  institutions,  and  in 
part  possessed  in  superior  degree  by  institutions  of 
the  cottage  type,  have  enabled  the  institutions, 
when  they  are  progressive  in  spirit  and  adequately 
financed,  to  make  their  own  contribution  to  the 
problem  of  caring  for  dependent  children. 

While  it  is  deemed  desirable  that  children  who 
must  be  removed  from  their  own  homes,  or  who 


CHILDHOOD  73 

have  no  homes,  should  be  cared  for  in  families 
whenever  practicable,  there  are  those  for  whom  it 
is  not  practicable;  there  are  those  who  require 
special  physical  care  or  special  training;  there  are 
those  who  are  not  placeable  in  free  homes  and  for 
whom  boarding  homes  are  not  available,  or  who  are 
in  communities  where  the  boarding  system  is  not 
in  operation.  Probably  the  proportions  will  later 
be  reversed.  Whereas  three  dependent  children 
are  now  in  institutions  to  one  placed  in  a  foster 
home,  there  may  be  one  in  an  institution,  prefer- 
ably on  the  cottage  plan,  to  three  in  foster  families 
under  proper  supervision.  At  the  same  time,  in- 
stead of  one  in  every  three  hundred  of  the  whole 
population,  we  may  hope,  by  relief  at  home  and 
by  preventive  measures,  that  not  more  than  one 
in  a  thousand  of  the  children  under  sixteen  will 
have  to  be  cared  for  outside  its  own  home  or  that 
of  its  relatives  or  adopted  parents. 

Among  preventive  measures  which  the  White 
House  Conference  so  emphatically  prefers  to  cura- 
tive, I  would  not  include  public  out-door  relief 
or  widows'  pensions.  I  would  include  social  in- 
surance for  sickness  and  widowhood.  I  would  not 
include  help  by  the  state  in  furnishing  school 
lunches,  eyeglasses,  clothing,  or  other  personal 
equipment.  I  would  include  the  physical  examina- 
tion of  children,  the  visiting  of  the  home,  and  the 
enforcement  when  necessary  of  natural  parental 
obligations.     I  believe,  in  other  words,  that  the 


74  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

state  should  enforce  a  minimum  standard  of  child 
care;  but  that  the  expense  of  providing  such  care 
should  fall  on  parents  and  in  case  of  their  disability 
on  some  insurance  fund  to  which  when  able  they 
have  contributed.  I  would  advocate  such  a  policy 
of  insuring  that  children's  needs  are  met  as  will 
strengthen  and  not  weaken  the  family  bond,  de- 
velop and  not  undermine  the  sense  of  family  re- 
sponsibility and  solidarity,  insure  a  fair  opportunity 
for  all  and  hold  the  individual  responsible  for  mak- 
ing the  most  of  that  opportunity  for  himself  and 
his  family. 


Ill 

YOUTH 


THE  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER 
If  childhood  is  for  education,  as  we  all  agree,  so 
also,  though  we  may  not  agree,  is  youth.  The 
period  of  adolescence  should  be  used  for  develop- 
ment, not  for  that  anticipation  of  the  tasks  and 
pleasures  of  adult  life  which  means  a  waste  of 
powers  and  atrophy  of  undiscovered  ability.  The 
physical  transition  from  boy  to  man,  from  girl  to 
woman,  must  be  accompanied  by  corresponding 
and  harmonious  mental  and  moral  changes,  if  a 
normal  maturity  is  to  be  reached;  and  to  ensure 
this  normal  development  our  chief  social  instru- 
ment is  education — more  education  and  better 
education:  education  for  economic  efficiency,  for 
profitable  enjoyment  of  leisure,  for  the  responsibil- 
ities of  marriage  and  family  life.  Indispensable 
to  it  are  more  opportunities  and  better  opportuni- 
ties for  wholesome  recreation.  Youth  demands  a 
positive  program  of  guidance  and  normal  develop- 
ment, to  meet  its  own  needs,  and  incidentally  to 
prepare  for  later  life. 

There  is  another  side,  also.  Abnormal  tenden- 
cies manifest  themselves  in  growing  boys  and 
girls,  and  it  is  exceedingly  important  that  these 
should  receive  attention,  to  the  end  that  they  may 

be  corrected  or  repressed  or  diverted,  as  the  case 
6  77 


78  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

may  require.  From  this  point  of  view  the  period 
of  adolescence  is  the  critical  time  in  life.  As  the 
supreme  consideration  in  infancy  is  the  establish- 
ment of  a  sound  and  vigorous  physique,  though  I 
would  not  dispute  with  those  who  hold  that  there 
may  be  a  place,  even  in  the  first  year  of  life,  for 
some  germs  of  mental  and  moral  training;  and  as 
in  childhood,  while,  to  be  sure,  the  physical  prob- 
lems are  still  important  and  the  moral  habits  are 
being  formed,  the  main  concern  is  to  educate  the 
mind;  so  in  youth  we  may  fairly  say,  without  de- 
preciating the  health  problems  and  the  mental 
problems,  that  the  central  interest  is  in  the  develop- 
ment of  character,  that,  in  fact,  it  is  for  their  im- 
mediate or  ultimate  influence  on  character — on 
personality — that  we  are  then  interested  in  health 
and  recreation  and  training  in  efficiency. 

SCHOOL  ATTENDANCE 
It  was  to  emphasize  the  importance  of  continuing 
the  period  devoted  to  education  past  childhood, 
into  and  through  adolescence,  that  I  refrained  in 
discussing  the  education  of  children  from  reference 
to  compulsory  school  attendance  and  child-labor 
laws.  That  children  should  go  to  school  needs  in 
America  no  argument.  There  are  some  children 
who  get  no  systematic  schooling,  either  in  public 
or  private  schools  or  at  the  hands  of  tutors  or  gov- 
ernesses, because  they  live  in  remote  country  dis- 
tricts or  in  neglected  corners  of  the  city,  because 


YOUTH  79 

they  are  sick  or  crippled,  or  because  their  parents  or 
guardians  are  indifferent  or  unsympathetic  to  the 
notion.  Such  children  are  few,  however,  and 
their  numbers  are  decreasing.  Public  opinion 
everywhere  in  America  recognizes  that  it  is  an 
elementary  duty  to  provide  a  seat  in  a  school-room 
for  every  child  and  to  see  that  he  occupies  it  with 
a  reasonable  degree  of  regularity  for  a  certain 
number  of  weeks  each  year  until  he  reaches  a  cer- 
tain age. 

How  long  the  child  is  to  go  to  school  is  a  question 
on  which  we  are  less  unanimous.  There  are  places 
where  the  school  term  for  the  year  is  not  more  than 
twelve  weeks,  and  others  where  it  is  forty,  with  an 
extension  of  six  weeks  of  modified  activities  in  the 
summer  vacation.  Children  start  to  school  at 
three,  four,  five,  six,  seven,  eight,  or  nine  years  of 
age,  and  they  leave  at  ten,  eleven,  twelve,  and  thir- 
teen, as  well  as  at  fourteen,  eighteen,  twenty-two, 
and  thirty.  I  presume  most  of  us  would  say,  if 
we  were  discussing  this  question  with  a  visitor 
from  Mars  or  Peru,  that  in  America  children  go  to 
school  until  they  are  fourteen  years  old,  and  that  by 
that  time  they  have  ordinarily  completed  what  we 
call  our  elementary  grades.  If,  however,  we  should 
go  to  the  latest  census  to  verify  our  statement,  we 
should  find  that  among  fourteen-year-old  children 
in  the  United  States  during  the  school  year  1909-10 
nineteen  in  every  hundred  had  had  no  connection 
whatever  with  any  kind  of  school — day  or  evening, 


80  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

public  or  private,  academic  or  industrial ;  and  that 
among  the  children  of  Maryland  there  were  twenty- 
nine  such  school-less  ones  in  every  hundred  in- 
stead of  nineteen.  We  should  find  that  the  pro- 
portion of  children  in  school  increases  rapidly  up 
to  the  age  of  eleven,  at  which  time,  in  the  country 
as  a  whole,  more  than  nine  out  of  ten  had  attended 
school  at  some  time  during  the  year ;  that  it  remains 
almost  as  high  at  twelve  and  thirteen;  drops  down, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  eighty-one  per  cent  at  fourteen; 
and  then  falls  rapidly  to  fifty  per  cent  at  sixteen, 
twenty-three  per  cent  at  eighteen,  and  eight  per 
cent  at  twenty.  We  should  discover  many  in- 
teresting variations  among  different  groups  and 
in  different  states:  that  below  fourteen,  for  ex- 
ample, the  children  of  immigrants  show  the  high- 
est proportion  of  school  attendance  (probably  be- 
cause they  live  mainly  in  cities,  where  schools  are 
thickest),  while  at  fourteen  and  over  the  children 
of  native-born  parents  are  more  apt  to  be  in  school ; 
that  the  boys  drop  out  somewhat  more  rapidly  than 
the  girls  from  twelve  to  eighteen,  but  more  slowly 
than  the  girls  after  that;  that  the  maximum  per- 
centage of  Negroes  in  school  at  any  age  is  seventy- 
three  per  cent  at  the  age  of  eleven;  and  that  the 
percentage  of  eleven-year-old  children  (the  ones 
who  are  most  apt  everywhere  to  be  in  school)  who 
did  not  attend  school  in  the  census  year  varies  in 
the  different  states  from  one  in  forty-three  in  Ver- 
mont to  one  in  three  in  Louisiana.     In  other  words, 


YOUTH  81 

Vermont  sends  ninety-eight  per  cent  of  her  chil- 
dren to  school  and  Louisiana  sixty-seven  per  cent. 
We  should  reluctantly  conclude  that  in  respect  to 
school  attendance  our  actual  accomplishment  is 
much  too  far  from  our  standard  of  what  is  normal. 
It  is  some  comfort,  however,  to  see  that  there  had 
been  a  substantial  advance  in  the  ten  years  between 
1900  and  1910.  Among  children  ten  to  fourteen 
years  old,  the  ages  at  which  school  attendance  is 
most  general,  there  were  eight  more  in  every 
hundred  going  to  school  in  1910  than  there  had 
been  in  1900.  The  improvement  was  common  to 
all  elements  of  the  population  and  to  both  sexes; 
it  was  most  significant  among  the  Negroes. 

ILLITERACY 

The  results  of  this  increase  in  school  attendance 
are  seen  in  the  figures  for  illiteracy.  (Persons  seem 
to  have  been  reported  as  "illiterate"  at  the  last 
census  if  they  could  not  write  their  names.)  Among 
children  ten  to  fourteen  years  old,  the  age  group 
which  has  had  the  advantage  of  the  latest  exten- 
sion of  educational  privileges  and  requirements, 
there  were  only  four  out  of  a  hundred  who  were 
"illiterate " ;  among  white  children  of  native  paren- 
tage there  were  only  two.  In  each  older  group  of 
persons  the  proportion  was  higher,  until  at  sixty- 
five  and  over  there  were  about  fifteen  in  every 
hundred  who  could  not  write,  the  increase  in  il- 
literacy at  successive  ages  taking  us  back  through 


82  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

successive  gradations  of  less  and  less  favorable 
childhood  conditions,  as  far  as  facilities  for  educa- 
tion are  concerned.  This  again  is  seen  most  strik- 
ingly among  the  Negroes:  among  the  old  people 
three-fourths  are  reported  as  illiterate,  but  the 
proportion  decreases  to  less  than  one-fifth  among 
the  children  ten  to  fourteen  years  of  age. 

Even  in  the  way  of  keeping  young  children  in 
school,  therefore,  we  still  have  much  to  do,  and 
serious  efforts  for  those  over  fourteen  are  still  in 
the  future.  The  curve  of  school  attendance,  which 
you  may  imagine  as  rising  from  early  childhood  to 
the  age  of  eleven,  having  a  narrow  apex  of  only 
three  years  from  eleven  to  thirteen,  falling  at  four- 
teen and  then  more  rapidly,  must  be  considerably 
modified.  It  should  be  filled  out  and  lifted  up 
until  it  embraces  at  ten,  eleven,  twelve,  thirteen, 
and  fourteen  years  of  age  all  the  children  whose 
education  can  profitably  be  carried  on  in  schools — 
say  something  like  ninety-nine  and  a  half  per  cent 
instead  of  only  eighty;  and  then  it  should  be  kept 
steadily  at  that  same  high  point  through  fifteen  and 
sixteen,  and  after  sixteen  should  not  be  allowed  to 
descend  so  precipitately.  The  "wasted  years" 
between  fourteen  and  sixteen,  which  are  worse 
than  wasted  if  used  for  earning,  are  the  most  pro- 
ductive years  for  development. 


YOUTH  83 

CHILD  LABOR  LAWS 

One  aid  to  keeping  children  in  school  is  to  keep 
them  out  of  the  factories  and  shops  and  mines  and 
mills  by  the  uncompromising  hand  of  law,  state 
and  federal.  Another  is  to  make  school  so  attrac- 
tive that  nothing  else  can  compete  with  it  in  in- 
terest. Child-labor  laws  cannot  be  enforced  suc- 
cessfully unless  the  compulsory  education  laws 
harmonize  with  them,  and  unless  there  are  schools 
for  all  the  children  involved,  and  unless  the  chil- 
dren want  to  attend  them,  or  at  least  their  parents 
want  them  to  do  so. 

There  are  good  reasons  why  children  should  not 
go  to  work.  They  have  been  stated  so  frequently 
and  so  well  and  in  so  many  ways  in  the  last  ten 
years,  since  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee 
was  organized,  that  it  almost  seems  necessary  to 
apologize  for  referring  to  them.  We  need  not,  at 
any  rate,  try  to  improve  on  statements  already 
made.  A  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago  an  Eng- 
lish physician,*  reporting  on  an  epidemic  among 
the  factory  children  in  Manchester,  called  atten- 
tion to  the  physical  injury  done  to  young  persons 
through  confinement  and  long-continued  labor  in 
the  cotton  mills,  asserting  that  "the  active  recrea- 
tions of  childhood  and  youth  are  necessary  to  the 
growth,  the  vigour,  and  the  right  conformation  of 

*  Quoted  in  Hutchins  and  Harrison:  History  of  Factory 
Legislation. 


84  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

the  human  body";  and  he  could  not  refrain  from 
suggesting,  though  apparently  he  felt  that  it  was  a 
little  outside  his  own  special  territory,  "this  further 
important  consideration,  that  the  rising  generation 
should  not  be  debarred  from  all  opportunities  of 
instruction  at  the  only  season  of  life  in  which  they 
can  be  properly  improved."  A  few  years  later, 
summarizing  in  another  connection  the  dangers  of 
factory  work,  he  refers  again  to  the  need  of  active 
exercise  in  youth  "to  invigorate  the  system  and  to 
fit  our  species  for  the  employments  and  for  the 
duties  of  manhood,"  and  to  the  importance  of  not 
debarring  children  from  all  opportunities  of  educa- 
tion, and  adds:  "The  untimely  labour  of  the  night, 
and  the  protracted  labour  of  the  day,  with  respect 
to  children,  not  only  tends  to  diminish  future  ex- 
pectations as  to  the  general  sum  of  life  and  indus- 
try, by  impairing  the  strength  and  destroying  the 
vital  stamina  of  the  rising  generation,  but  it  too 
often  gives  encouragement  to  idleness,  extrava- 
gance, and  profligacy  in  the  parents,  who,  contrary 
to  the  order  of  nature,  subsist  by  the  oppression  of 
their  offspring."  This  last  point  was  made  later 
on  by  a  magistrate  testifying  before  Sir  Robert 
Peel's  parliamentary  committee  in  1816:  "If 
parents  were  thrown  more  upon  themselves  and 
did  not  draw  a  profit  from  children  in  their  very 
early  years,  they  might  not  waste  so  much  of  their 
own  time,  they  would  work  harder,  and  probably 
obtain  better  wages  for  better  work."     Another 


YOUTH  85 

witness  at  the  same  hearing  called  attention  to  the 
low  wages  of  adult  workers  as  an  argument  against 
child  labor. 

These  arguments,  to  be  sure,  were  applied  chiefly 
to  children  under  ten,  whose  right  to  childhood  is 
happily  no  longer  questioned  in  America  except 
in  isolated  instances.  We  all  agree  with  Robert 
Owen  now  that  it  is  "not  necessary  for  children 
(i.  e.,  not  necessary  for  their  good)  to  be  employed 
under  ten  years  of  age  in  any  regular  work";  that 
the  "danger  of  their  acquiring  vicious  habits  for 
want  of  regular  occupation"  is  negligible,  and  that, 
on  the  contrary,  their  "habits"  are  apt  to  be  "good 
in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  their  education." 

Gradually — much  too  gradually — we  have  been 
extending  the  minimum  length  of  childhood  to 
twelve  years,  to  fourteen  years,  and  now  are  trying 
to  push  it  up  to  sixteen.  We  have  learned  more 
definitely  why  it  should  be  extended.  The  bony 
structure  of  the  body  is  still  plastic  and  yielding. 
Important  physiological  functions  are  in  process  of 
establishment.  A  large  amount  of  evidence  has 
been  accumulated  to  show  the  high  cost  of  the  piti- 
ful wages  that  can  be  earned  in  these  years:  the 
cost  in  disease,  in  accidents,  in  crime,  in  inefficient 
maturity,  in  demoralized,  topsy-turvy  relations  of 
parents  and  children.  Boys  and  girls  who  work  in 
cotton-mills  have  about  twice  as  high  a  death-rate 
as  other  boys  and  girls.  Machinery  bites  off  chil- 
dren's fingers  when  they  are  inattentive,  as  chil- 


86  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

dren  sometimes  are,  leaving  them  "no  good  for 
work  any  more."  Children  who  work  are  apt  to 
be  undersized  and  anemic.  They  are  found  in  the 
juvenile  courts  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  num- 
bers, are  more  inclined  to  the  serious  offenses,  and 
very  much  more  apt  to  become  habitual  delinquents, 
so  that,  inasmuch  as  the  working  and  the  non- 
working  juvenile  delinquents  come  from  "the  same 
general  level  of  well-being,"  it  "seems  rather  dif- 
ficult," as  the  Bureau  of  Labor  conservatively  puts 
it,  "to  escape  the  conclusion  that  being  at  work  has 
something  to  do  with  their  going  wrong."*  Chil- 
dren who  go  to  work  at  fourteen  are  earning  less  at 
eighteen  than  those  who  begin  two  years  later,  and 
there  is  reason  to  believe  that  their  wages  and  the 
steadiness  of  their  employment  compare  even  more 
unfavorably  at  thirty  and  forty,  when  they  have 
children  of  their  own.  All  this  new  knowledge  has 
had  its  effect.  We  do  not  like  to  think  of  children 
working  while  grown  people  are  idle,  even  if  they 
are  not  in  the  same  family.  Miss  Cleghorn's  re- 
cent quatrain  in  the  New  York  Tribune  makes  us 
uncomfortable: 

The  golf-links  lie  so  near  the  mill 

That  almost  every  day 
The  laboring  children  can  look  out 

And  watch  the  men  at  play. 

And  yet,  in  actual  practice,  in  the  realization  of 

our  standards,  we  have  not  yet  attained  the  very 

*  Woman   and    Child  Wage-earners,    vol.    viii,    Sixty-first 
Congress,  Senate  Document  645. 


YOUTH  87 

reasonable  ideal  proposed  by  Dr.  Roger  S.  Tracy  a 
full  generation  ago:* 

I  think,  therefore,  that  eventually  the  laws 
will  be  so  framed  as  to  either  prevent  the  em- 
ployment of  children  in  factories  before  the 
age  of  puberty,  or  render  their  employment 
under  that  age  liable  to  irregular  interruptions, 
and  therefore  a  well-recognized  commercial 
risk.  The  age  at  which  they  may  first  be 
employed  will  either  be  fixed  arbitrarily  at 
fourteen  or  fifteen  or  will  be  left  to  the  judg- 
ment of  a  medical  inspector.  Between  four- 
teen and  twenty  the  youth  is  still  immature, 
although  capable  of  considerable  endurance, 
and  he  or  she  should  not  be  allowed  to  work 
more  than  eight  hours  a  day  at  the  most. 
After  this  age  the  hours  and  methods  of  labor 
may  safely  be  left  to  be  determined  by  the  law 
of  competition. 

CHILDREN  AT  WORK 
And  yet,  even  now,  the  census  investigators  of 
19 10  found  nearly  two  million  children  engaged  in 
"gainful  occupations,"  more  than  one  in  six  of  the 
children  between  ten  and  sixteen  years  of  age;  so 
many,  as  Mr.  Lewis  VV.  Hine  puts  it,  with  the  vivid- 
ness of  one  of  his  photographs,  that  "the  proces- 
sion .  .  .  would  take  five  years  to  pass  a 
given  point  if  the  children  appeared  at  the  rate  of 
one  a  minute  day  and  night," — and  that,  too,  with- 

*  Second  Report  of  the  New  York  Bureau  of  Labor  Sta- 
tistics, 1879. 


88  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

out  the  children  who  work  in  the  cranberry  bogs 
of  New  Jersey,  in  the  fruit  and  vegetable  canneries 
of  New  York,  in  the  berry  fields  of  Maryland  and 
Delaware — to  mention  only  a  few  places  where 
special  inquiries  have  found  large  numbers  of  them 
in  seasonal  occupations  which  were  not  in  opera- 
tion in  the  month  of  April,  when  the  census  was 
taken.  Three  out  of  four  of  the  children  in  the 
procession  would  come  from  the  farms  and  dairies 
and  lumber-camps,  the  ranches  and  oyster-beds 
and  bee-hives  and  chicken-coops,  which  is  less 
idyllic  than  it  may  sound.  Most  of  the  rest  would 
come  from  kitchens  and  nurseries,  factories,  mills, 
machine-shops,  and  stores;  quarries  and  mines; 
foundries  and  glass-works  and  printing-presses  and 
sweat-shops;  and  from  the  streets,  where  they  have 
been  selling  newspapers,  blacking  boots,  driving 
grocery  wagons,  and  running  to  and  fro  witrt  tele- 
grams and  hat-boxes  and  proof  and  other  things 
that  must  be  carried  quickly  from  one  place  to 
another.  There  would  also  be,  scattered  through 
the  procession,  eight  postmasters  fourteen  and  fif- 
teen years  old;  three  hundred  and  fifty-five  little 
boys  ten  to  thirteen  years  of  age  who  were  laborers 
on  steam  railroads;  nineteen  mail-carriers  under 
fourteen  and  twenty-one  school-teachers,  not  to 
mention  two  "jigger  men  and  jolly  men"  in  the 
potteries,  a  stationary  engineer  in  an  iron  mine, 
three  engineers  on  boats,  four  bakers  and  two  baker- 
esses,  one  hundred  and  fifty-one  barbers  and  hair- 


YOUTH  89 

dressers,  four  compositors,  three  grocers,  seven- 
teen turfmen,  five  artists  and  seven  photographers, 
five  librarians'  assistants,  and  three  "other  literary 
persons,"  ten  music  teachers,  two  surveyors,  and 
one  "other  scientific  person,"  one  sexton,  two  hun- 
dred and  eleven  nurses  ("not  trained"),  and  six 
"religious  and  charity  workers,"  three  of  each  sex. 

Child  labor  still  exists  in  America.  There  are 
even  regularly  employed  wage-earners  not  yet  ten 
years  old — younger  than  those  of  whom  I  have 
just  spoken.  Investigators  find  them  here  and 
there,  and  there  are  records  of  them  on  the  in- 
dividual schedules  filled  out  by  the  census  enu- 
merators in  1910,  though  the  tabulators  have  not 
bothered  to  count  them  up. 

We  hoped  when  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee was  organized  in  1904  that  it  would  be  able 
to  accomplish  its  purpose  and  go  out  of  existence 
after  ten  years  if  it  worked  hard.  We  are  greatly 
disappointed  that  it  has  not.  A  great  deal  has 
been  accomplished,  but,  as  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  who 
has  been  chairman  of  the  Committee  since  the  be- 
ginning, said  at  the  tenth  annual  meeting  last  year: 

Though  there  is  more  or  less  adequate  legis- 
lation in  the  great  majority  of  the  states,  there 
are  still  enormous  obstacles  to  be  surmounted ; 
indifference  is  to  be  turned  into  ardor,  and 
laws  that  now  lie  cold  in  the  statute-book  as 
in  a  tomb  are  to  be  resurrected  into  the  life  of 
enforcement. 


90  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

"The  unexpected  magnitude  of  child  labor,"  to 
quote  Dr.  Samuel  McCune  Lindsay,  the  first  sec- 
retary of  the  Committee,  "the  stubbornness  of  the 
interests  arrayed  in  its  support — employers'  profits, 
parental  selfishness  and  indifference,  and  the  child's 
aversion  to,  or  the  hopeless  inadequacy  or  ineffec- 
tiveness of  educational  opportunities — and  the 
ease  with  which  many  forms  of  child  labor  eluded 
any  known  legislative  restraint,"  have  shown  that 
the  undertaking  is  greater  than  was  anticipated. 
What  has  been  accomplished  in  the  decade,  how- 
ever, justifies  the  estimate  of  the  present  secretary, 
Mr.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy,  that  child  labor  may  be 
completely  abolished  "within  the  life  of  the  present 
generation": 

We  now  know  where  child  labor  exists  and 
in  what  forms.  We  know  what  forces  must 
be  opposed  in  seeking  legislation.  We  have 
learned  the  importance  of  practical  education 
for  all  children  and  how  to  cooperate  with 
educators  to  promote  it.  We  have  been  in- 
strumental in  setting  on  foot  the  most  im- 
portant public  service  ever  rendered  by  the 
Federal  Government,  in  the  establishment  of 
the  Federal  Children's  Bureau.  We  are  now 
at  the  door  of  Congress  asking  our  Govern- 
ment to  outlaw  traffic  among  the  states  in  the 
products  of  child  labor.* 

*  The  reference  is  to  the  Palmer-Owen  bill  to  exclude  from 
inter-State  commerce  goods  in  the  manufacture  of  which  chil- 
dren under  fourteen  had  been  employed.  This  bill  passed  the 
House  of  Representatives  by  a  large  majority,  but  did  not 
reach  a  vote  in  the  Senate  in  the  Sixty-third  Congress. 


YOUTH  91 

Thirty-six  states  now  have  a  fourteen-year  limit 
for  factories;  thirty-four  prohibit  night  work  under 
sixteen  years;  eighteen  require  an  eight-hour  day 
between  fourteen  and  sixteen;  and  thirty-six  provide 
for  the  inspection  of  factories. 

With  all  the  children  shut  out  of  industry  to  the 
age  of  sixteen, — as  all  girls  are  in  Ohio, — we  have 
discharged  our  first  duty  to  normal  adolescence. 
The  next  step  is  to  keep  them  in  school. 

Little  children  are  not  critical.  They  accept 
school,  as  they  accept  their  relatives  and  their 
backyard  and  front  door-step,  as  a  part  of  the  uni- 
verse with  which  they  are  getting  acquainted.  By 
the  time  they  have  reached  the  age  of  twelve  or 
fourteen,  however,  their  attitude  changes.  They 
make  comparisons;  they  become  restless;  they 
chafe  against  restraint  and  look  about  for  more 
adequate  channels  of  self-expression  and  develop- 
ment; and  when  the  opportunity  comes  for  a 
change,  they  welcome  it.  This  is  what  make  this 
period  at  once  the  despair  and  the  opportunity  for 
the  educator. 

It  has  been  a  popular  pastime,  and  a  profitable 
one,  for  several  years  to  ask  working  children  why 
they  left  school  when  they  did,  and  the  most  com- 
mon answer,  aside  from  the  assumption  that  it 
was  the  thing  to  do  as  soon  as  one  reached  his  four- 
teenth birthday  or  "graduated"  from  grammar 
school,  has  always  been  that  they  were  tired  of  it, 
or  didn't  like  it;    four  hundred  and  twelve  out  of 


92  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

five  hundred  factory  children  said  definitely  that 
they  liked  the  factory  better.*  Their  reasons  for 
this  preference  are  well  summarized  by  two  of  them, 
who  explained  it  thus: 

You  never  understand  what  they  tells  you 
in  school,  but  you  can  learn  right  off  to  do 
things  in  a  factory. 

When  you  works  a  whole  month  at  school, 
the  teacher  she  gives  you  a  card  to  take  home, 
that  says  how  you  ain't  any  good. 

These  two  comments  go  to  the  root  of  the  edu- 
cator's problem.  To-day's  young  people  are  prac- 
tical. They  want  to  make  things,  to  get  results, 
to  see  the  use  of  whatever  they  are  asked  to  do  in 
school.  They  are  interested  in  their  school  work, 
apparently,  in  proportion  to  the  relation  which 
they  can  see  between  it  and  "real  life." 

It  is  on  the  teaching  profession  that  the  main 
responsibility  must  rest  for  solving  these  educa- 
tional problems,  for  "rationalizing"  and  "democ- 
ratizing" the  public  schools  and  making  them  as 
useful  to  the  boys  and  girls  who  leave  them  at 
sixteen  to  go  into  an  office  or  a  factory  as  they  have 
been  in  the  past  to  those  who  go  on  into  normal 
school  or  college.  We  may  safely  leave  this  re- 
sponsibility with  the  educators  of  the  country — 
half  a  million  of  them  there  are,  or  more,  including 
those    twenty-one    under   fourteen    years   of   age, 

•  Helen  M.  Todd  in  McClure's  Magazine,  April,  1913. 


YOUTH  93 

though  we  ought  not  perhaps  to  impose  too  much 
responsibility  on  these  infants — if  the  students  of 
industrial  problems  do  their  part  in  supplying  in- 
formation about  the  conditions  in  the  various  in- 
dustries and  in  helping  to  analyze  the  various  pro- 
cesses with  a  view  to  discovering  what  is  the 
precise  training  required  for  each. 

EDUCATION  FOR  ADAPTABILITY 
Education  for  efficiency  is  not  to  be  identified 
with  a  narrowly  specialized  "vocational"  educa- 
tion. Too  narrowly  specialized  training  may  have 
precisely  the  opposite  result,  creating  inefficiency 
instead  of  efficiency.  Processes  in  any  vocation 
may  be  completely  revolutionized  within  a  few 
years,  or  the  vocation  itself  may  disappear.  Adap- 
tability to  changing  conditions  becomes,  therefore, 
quite  as  desirable  for  the  normal  man  and  woman 
as  specialized  skill  in  a  particular  process.  Points 
of  similarity  in  several  different  occupations  are 
more  numerous  and  important  than  appear  upon 
the  surface.  Quickness,  dexterity,  skill  in  making 
particular  combinations,  coordination  of  eye  and 
hand,  may  be  transferred  from  one  kind  of  factory 
to  another  if  trade-union  regulations  or  traditional 
notions  of  administration  do  not  interfere. 

In  addition  to  the  elementary  education  which 
childhood  receives  in  the  school  and  the  home,  there 
is  a  more  liberal  form  of  education,  though  it  is 
fundamentally  the  same — an  education  suitable  for 


94  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

more  mature  youth,  the  aim  of  which  is  to  give  just 
this  adaptability  to  changing  conditions,  a  training 
which  is  not  for  a  trade  but  for  life,  for  the  indus- 
trial and  economic  and  moral  situations  that  will 
arise,  for  the  crises  which  will  come,  requiring  judg- 
ment and  character.  This  more  liberal  education 
lies  at  the  very  foundation  of  efficiency.  Fourteen 
to  sixteen  or  eighteen  are  the  years  for  it.  It  can, 
no  doubt,  be  imparted  in  the  commercial  and  trade 
school,  in  agricultural  courses  and  domestic  science, 
as  well  as  in  history,  literature,  art,  and  economics. 
But  that  it  is  distinct  from  and  prior  to  the  choice 
of  a  vocation,  and  must  freely  include  many  ele- 
ments which  should  not  be  taken  for  granted  as 
likely  to  be  picked  up  incidentally  in  the  course  of 
specialized  trade  instruction,  seems  hardly  open  to 
question. 

VOCATIONAL  GUIDANCE 
Specialized  training  for  a  particular  vocation  is 
exceedingly  important,  to  supplement  this  funda- 
mental education  in  adaptability,  but  it  should  not 
begin  too  early.  Probably  it  should  not  begin  be- 
fore sixteen.  The  child  who  has  had  an  undiffer- 
entiated general  education,  as  diversified  and  well 
rounded  as  possible,  including  training  of  muscles 
and  senses,  as  well  as  of  reasoning  powers  and  other 
faculties  which  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  refer- 
ring to  as  "the  brain,"  but  without  special  instruc- 
tion in  the  technique  of  any  one  trade  or  calling,  may 


YOUTH  95 

even  turn  out  to  be  better  equipped  to  earn  a  living 
after  sixteen  than  the  one  who  has  been  specializ- 
ing for  the  two  years  in  a  vocation  which  he  se- 
lected at  fourteen. 

Most  children  could  do  a  number  of  different 
things  equally  well.  Most  children,  also,  are  ready 
to  choose  an  occupation  at  a  moment's  notice. 
The  younger  they  are,  the  easier  it  is  for  them  to 
choose.  But  this  is  no  excuse  for  narrowing  their 
outlook,  restricting  their  future  opportunities,  by 
asking  them  to  choose  before  they  have  the  basis 
for  doing  so  wisely.  You  would  not  hold  your  boy 
to  his  chosen  vocation  of  fireman  or  sailor  or  police- 
man or  baseball  player  or  president  of  the  United 
States,  and  direct  his  studies  from  this  time  forth 
toward  that  goal. 

Consider  how  occupations  in  life  are  determined. 
We  may  have  a  position  waiting  for  us  in  our  fa- 
ther's business  from  the  time  we  are  born,  in  view 
of  which  our  education  is  planned  from  the  outset. 
Crown  princes  had  vocational  training  long  before 
the  phrase  was  used  or  the  proposition  made  to — 
shall  I  say  democratize? — the  thing  itself.  We 
may  have  been  destined  for  the  ministry  and  have 
worked  our  way  painfully  through  the  requisite 
Latin  and  Greek  and  Hebrew,  while  all  our  interest 
was  in  mathematics  and  physics,  and  then,  assert- 
ing independence  midway  of  the  college  course,  have 
turned  out  eventually — an  electrical  engineer. 
Most  of  us  in  America,  however,  have  freer  rein 


96  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

and  can  take  the  path  that  allures  us  as  soon  as  we 
recognize  it,  within  the  limitations  of  our  circum- 
stances. Your  young  man  may  then,  let  us  say, 
after  a  liberal  education,  a  professional  training 
of  some  sort,  and  some  reasonably  successful  years 
in  teaching  or  the  ministry  or  the  law  or  in  business, 
have  found  his  way  to  social  work.  One  whom  I 
know  had  the  definite  intention,  at  successive  stages 
of  his  education,  of  being  a  doctor,  a  minister,  and 
a  journalist,  and  at  each  stage  he  was  so  fortunate 
as  to  have  had  the  sympathy  and  advice  of  wise 
representatives  of  the  profession  just  then  at  stake 
who  encouraged  him  to  join  their  ranks.  He  thinks 
now  that  he  would  not  have  been  a  success  in  any 
of  the  three.  The  probability  is  that  he  would  have 
been  moderately  successful,  moderately  contented, 
in  any  of  them. 

There  are  many  students,  even  in  professional 
schools,  who  have  not  yet  "found  themselves,"  in 
spite  of  the  more  than  average  opportunity  they 
have  had  to  do  so.  The  head  of  a  large  engineering 
school  is  reported,  in  a  recent  newspaper  article,  to 
have  said  that  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of  the  men  in 
that  school  do  not  belong  there.  Sixty  per  cent 
of  the  graduates  of  a  well-known  law  school  stay  in 
clerical  positions  because  they  have  no  real  aptitude 
for  the  law.  Medical  schools  say  that  the  number 
of  students  temperamentally  unqualified  to  become 
physicians  is  lamentably  large,  and  seems  to  be 
increasing.     Normal    schools    estimate    that    less 


YOUTH  97 

than  half  of  their  students  have  any  special  teach- 
ing ability;  and  fifteen  theological  schools  report 
that  seventy  per  cent  of  their  enrollment  have  no 
marked  qualifications  for  the  profession  they  are 
preparing  to  enter.  Even  in  the  training  schools 
for  social  work,  although  this  profession  has  not 
yet  begun  to  attract  in  any  considerable  numbers 
persons  not  naturally  adapted  to  it,  we  find  stu- 
dents every  once  in  a  while  whom  we  are  not  justi- 
fied in  encouraging  to  complete  the  course. 

HOW"  JOBS  ARE  FOUND  IN  INDUSTRY 
Boys  and  girls  who  leave  school  to  go  to  work  as 
soon  as  the  law  allows  are  not  likely  to  be  more 
fortunate  in  their  choice  of  an  occupation  than 
young  men  and  women  in  professional  schools. 
Usually  there  is  not  much  "choice"  involved. 
They  "get  a  job"  in  any  way  they  can — through  a 
friend  or  a  brother  or  sister,  by  answering  adver- 
tisements, or  by  applying  in  response  to  a  sign 
Boy  Wanted  or  Girl  Wanted,  no  matter  for  what. 
Miss  Van  Kleeck  tells  of  a  Hungarian  woman 
who  had  worked  for  four  years  in  flower  shops  as 
the  result  of  a  "negative  choice,"  made  by  eliminat- 
ing other  occupations:* 

Nor  was  her  enthusiasm  great  for  the  trade 
which  she  had  selected.  .  .  .  She  went 
into  flower  making  because  she  knew  that  in 
saleswork  the  hours  were  always  long  and  $7.00 

*  Artificial  Flower  Makers,  p.  200. 


98  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

about  the  maximum  wage.  She  couldn't 
stand  machine  operating  on  account  of  the 
noise,  and  didn't  care  for  dressmaking.  She 
had  been  watching  the  newspapers  and  had 
seen  a  great  many  advertisements  for  flower 
makers.  Now  that  she  has  tried  it  she  thinks 
it  is  as  good  as  any  other  trade.  It  is  better 
than  vest  making,  for  instance,  where  the  girls 
have  to  work  with  men.  Still,  she  says  many 
people  think  flower  making  is  not  a  very 
healthy  trade.  The  doctor  had  told  her  that 
she  must  leave  it  if  she  became  anemic. 

Even  more  casual  was  a  Russian  girl's  choice  :* 

When  she  left  school  she  decided  she  would 
like  to  get  into  a  department  store.  So  she 
went  up  to  Sixth  Avenue  and  asked  a  police- 
man where  the  different  stores  were.  He 
pointed  them  out  to  her  and  she  applied  as 
cash  girl,  salesgirl,  stock  girl,  and  so  on,  but 
nobody  wanted  her.  As  she  was  walking 
home  down  Broadway  she  noticed  a  sign  out 
for  artificial  flower  makers.  She  had  heard 
that  girls  often  worked  at  this  trade.  So  she 
,  went  in  and  applied  for  a  "situation"  and  was 
told  to  come  the  next  day. 

The  interesting  experiences  of  a  New  York 
Italian  boy  in  the  first  three  months  of  his  indus- 
trial career  were  related  by  Mr.  Winthrop  D.  Lane 
in  The  Survey  not  long  ago:f 

On  the  last  day  of  last  January  John  Pan- 
ello,  aged  fifteen  years  and  five  months,  grad- 

*  P.  201.  t  Vol.  xxix,  p.  225,  November  23,  1912. 


YOUTH  99 

uated  from  a  public  grammar  school  in  New 
York.  On  the  twentieth  of  February  he  got 
his  "working  papers"  from  the  Board  of 
Health.  In  school  he  had  been  fond  of  arith- 
metic, and  from  childhood  had  wanted  to  be- 
come a  bookkeeper.  But  the  class-room  had 
become  irksome  to  him,  and  his  parents, 
financially  comfortable,  had  just  "taken  it  for 
granted"  that  he  would  go  to  work  after 
graduation.  He  received  no  answer  to  his 
first  application  for  a  job — that  of  office  boy 
in  a  place  where  he  hoped  that  he  might  work 
up  to  a  position  as  bookkeeper  .  .  .  After 
three  weeks  of  looking  for  work  he  got  a  job 
as  errand  boy  for  a  dyeing  and  cleaning  estab- 
lishment. Five  dollars  a  week  were  the  wages, 
and  tips  amounted  to  a  dollar  or  two  extra. 
At  the  end  of  one  week  the  boy  who  had  had 
the  job  before  came  back  and  John  was  fired. 
.  .  .  After  a  day's  hunt  he  saw  a  sign, 
"Boy  Wanted,"  and  was  taken  on  by  a  firm 
manufacturing  ladies'  hats.  Here  he  swept  the 
floor,  ran  errands,  and  helped  to  pack.  At  the 
end  of  two  weeks  ...  he  left  because  "a 
feller  who  had  been  there  four  years  was  getting 
only  $6.00  a  week." 

Before  leaving  he  had  been  lucky  enough  to 
get  a  promise  of  a  job  with  a  millinery  firm. 
At  first  his  work  consisted  in  "going  for  stuff 
to  the  first  floor,"  then  he  ran  a  crimping  ma- 
chine, and  next  was  detailed  to  "get  the  cord 
downstairs  for  the  men  who  make  rugs." 
After  a  week  and  a  half  of  this  .  .  .  "an- 
other feller  said  'come  along  and  learn  car- 
pentry,' "  so  John  got  a  job  at  loading  and  un- 


100  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

loading  wagons  for  a  firm  that  made  wooden 
boxes.  .  .  .  When  he  learned  that  the 
boss  was  going  to  move  to  Staten  Island  he 
decided  to  quit  ...  He  had  been  with 
the  firm  two  weeks. 

During  the  next  three  weeks  John  did  five 
different  kinds  of  work  for  a  manufacturer  of 
jewelry  and  notions.  He  was  making  $4.50, 
but  when  a  man  said,  "Come  along,  I've  got  an 
office  job  for  you,"  he  quit.  The  "office  job" 
consisted  in  acting  as  shipping  clerk,  running 
errands,  answering  the  telephone,  and  sweep- 
ing the  floor  for  a  manufacturer  of  artificial 
flowers.  He  is  still  there,  getting  $5.00  a  week. 
He  doesn't  think  much  of  the  work.  "What 
can  I  learn  there?"  he  asks. 

In  consequence  of  our  growing  realization  of  such 
conditions  as  these,  there  has  sprung  up  in  the  last 
ten  years  a  whole  series  of  new  educational  devices 
which  it  would  be  hopeless  to  attempt  to  discuss 
here.  It  may  suggest  the  various  problems  in- 
volved to  enumerate  some  terms  which  President 
Pearse  of  the  State  Normal  School  at  Milwaukee 
undertook  to  define  at  the  meeting  of  the  National 
Education  Association*  last  year: 

Manual  Training. 
Industrial  Education. 
Vocational  Education. 
Professional  Vocational  Education. 
Commercial  Vocational  Education. 
Industrial  Vocational  Education. 

*  Addresses  and  Proceedings,  1914,  pp.  582-586. 


YOUTH  101 

Trade  Education. 
Occupational  Education. 
Agricultural  Education. 
Pre- vocational  Education. 
Continuation  Education. 
Non-vocational  Continuation  Education. 
Vocational  Continuation  Education. 
Continuation  Occupational  Education. 
Commercial  Continuation  Education. 
Professional  Continuation  Education. 
Vocational  Guidance. 

Vocational  guidance  is,  properly  speaking,  a 
feature  of  work  rather  than  of  education,  although 
it  is  an  educator's  and  not  a  foreman's  function. 
Dr.  Herman  Schneider  insists  that  it  should  ac- 
company work  and  cannot  safely  precede  it.  The 
Cincinnati  plan  aims  to  keep  young  people  until 
eighteen  in  touch  with  those  who  are  interested  in 
getting  them  properly  placed  by  requiring  them  to 
come  back  to  the  school  authorities  for  a  new 
authorization  every  time  they  change  positions. 
By  the  two-fold  policy  of  bringing  the  graduates  of 
the  grammar  school  into  contact  with  a  wide  range 
of  activities  when  they  are  ready  to  feel  their  way 
into  industry,  and  requiring  them  to  justify  their 
plans  each  time  they  take  a  new  job  until  they  are 
eighteen,  they  avoid  the  pitfalls  which  lie  in  any 
scheme  for  fitting  boys  and  girls  to  particular  jobs 
merely  by  physical  examinations  or  by  the  tests 
and  methods  of  experimental  psychology. 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA   BARBARA 


102  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

HEALTH 

Early  adolescence  under  normal  conditions  sees 
the  health  problem  almost  solved,  if  the  death-rate 
be  taken  as  an  index.  Deaths  from  disease  in  the 
years  between  ten  and  fifteen  are  comparatively 
rare.  In  New  York,  for  example,  in  1910,  one 
death  occurred  from  all  causes  in  every  four  hun- 
dred of  the  population  of  that  age,  as  against  one 
in  twenty  under  five  years  of  age  and  one  in  thirty- 
five  in  the  twenty  years  from  forty-five  to  sixty- 
five.  After  fifteen  tuberculosis  begins  to  affect 
the  death-rate  more  seriously.  A  large  proportion 
of  the  comparatively  small  number  of  deaths  be- 
tween ten  and  fifteen,  one-ninth  or  one-eighth  of 
the  whole,  are  due  to  drowning,  injuries  from  fire- 
arms, street  and  railway  accidents,  homicide,  and 
other  external  causes. 

But,  of  course,  the  death-rate  at  this  age  is  not  a 
complete  index  of  the  health  problem.  In  adoles- 
cence, as  in  infancy  and  childhood,  normal,  healthy 
living  requires  some  conscious  attention  to  physical 
defects  and  diseases.  The  teeth  require  frequent 
cleaning  and  prompt  treatment  of  cavities.  Free 
dental  clinics  have  their  champions,  though  I 
think  inexpensive  service  would  be  better.  Cer- 
tainly decayed  teeth  are  a  neglected  source  of  in- 
fection, even  in  this  country,  in  spite  of  the  deserv- 
edly high  reputation  of  American  dental  surgery. 
We  should  not  have  to  choose  between  the  high 


YOUTH  103 

prices  charged  by  skilful  dentists,  a  free  dental 
clinic,  or  a  fraudulent  painless  dental  parlor.  A 
dentist  has  suggested  the  advantage  of  opening,  at 
many  convenient  places,  tooth-cleaning  establish- 
ments, economically  equipped  but  sanitary,  in 
charge  of  properly  instructed  young  women — there 
is  no  special  merit  perhaps  in  their  being  young — 
where,  for  twenty-five  cents,  or  at  most  half  a 
dollar,  any  customer,  we  would  not  have  to  call 
them  patients,  could  drop  in  as  he  would  for  a  shine 
or  a  shave  or  a  haircut,  and  have  the  tartar  removed 
and  the  harmless  polish  applied.  In  somewhat  the 
same  way  for  the  fitting  of  glasses  a  trained  re- 
fractionist,  even  if  not  an  optical  surgeon,  may  per- 
form a  useful  function.  By  standing  out  too  stiffly 
for  the  principle  that  glasses  can  be  fitted  only  by 
one  who  knows  all  about  the  diseases  of  the  eye, 
or  teeth  cleaned  only  by  a  doctor  of  dental  surgery, 
the  medical  profession  might  easily  defeat  its  own 
ends  and  impose  upon  persons  of  limited  means  a 
disagreeable  choice  of  prohibitive  expense,  charity, 
and  charlatanism. 

Adenoids  may  still  be  present  to  remove  in  the 
adolescent  years,  or  may  have  come  back  after 
earlier  treatment.  Spinal  curvatures  and  broken 
arches  and  organs  which  do  not  function  properly 
may  still  require  appropriate  remedy.  Such  con- 
ditions may  be  evidence  of  earlier  neglect,  or  they 
may  have  developed  after  an  apparently  normal 
infancy  and  childhood.     Eternal  vigilance  to  de- 


104  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

tect  them  promptly,  efficient  discipline  to  correct 
them  definitely,  and  a  not  too  penurious  provision 
by  parents,  or,  if  necessary,  by  the  community,  for 
medical  and  surgical  treatment  are  the  price  of 
normality  in  adolescence,  as  in  childhood. 

Faults  of  diet  and  of  physical  carriage  and  habits 
injurious  to  health  and  energy  plant  the  seeds  of 
disease  from  which  the  harvest  is  reaped  in  later 
life.  Protection  from  such  faults  and  habits,  and 
persistent  instructions  in  the  laws  and  precepts  of 
normal  healthy  living,  are,  therefore,  as  appropriate 
as  in  childhood — perhaps  even  more  essential. 
For  at  this  adolescent  age  the  mind  is  capable  of 
receiving  and  storing  up  dominant  ideals,  perma- 
nent motives,  which  will  color  the  whole  subse- 
quent life.  Even  childhood  does  this,  but  youth 
does  it  more  consciously,  more  rationally,  and  more 
firmly.  Our  health  ideal  must  be  social,  demo- 
cratic, positive,  associated  with  vigor  and  enjoy- 
ment and  fullness  of  life.  To  get  such  a  dominant 
ideal  in  the  back  of  the  minds  of  the  youth  of  Amer- 
ica is  the  most  stirring  program  of  social  reform. 

Recreation  in  these  years  of  character  forming 
is  essential,  not  primarily  for  health,  but  for  more 
direct  and  more  complex  ends.  Athletic  sports, 
causing  the  young  men  and  maidens  to  put  forth 
their  strength,  to  measure  their  utmost  physical 
powers  with  one  another  or  with  an  ideal  bogey, 
giving  them  experience  with  team  play  in  its  most 
developed  and  subtle  forms,  guarding  them  by  the 


YOUTH  105 

varied  attractions  of  the  recreation  fields  from 
baser  pleasures,  have  a  social  value  far  surpassing 
their  mere  health-giving  function,  though  that  of 
itself  is  not  to  be  despised. 

MENTAL  DEFECT 

From  the  baby's  standpoint  we  found  reasons  for 
advocating  the  segregation  and  continued  custodial 
care  of  the  mentally  defective,  who,  if  at  large, 
might  become  their  fathers  and  mothers.  If  by 
some  Bluebird  magic  we  could  conjure  the  unborn 
babies  into  a  council,  we  may  be  sure  that,  for 
many  reasons,  they  would  choose  other  than  the 
feeble-minded  for  parents. 

Both  on  grounds  of  fact  and  of  theory,  says  the 
British  Royal  Commission  on  this  subject,  there  is 
the  highest  degree  of  probability  that  "feeble- 
mindedness" is  usually  spontaneous  in  origin, 
that  is,  not  due  to  influences  acting  on  the  parent, 
and  tends  strongly  to  be  inherited.  If  this  is  so, 
prevention  is  not  to  be  expected  through  such  means 
as  lessen  sickness  and  injuries,  but  rather  by  such 
means  as  prevent  this  inheritance.  It  is  in  the 
years  of  adolescence  and  early  maturity  that  the 
need  for  custodial  institutional  care  is  greatest,  as 
our  laws  recognize  and  the  ages  of  the  actual  popula- 
tion of  the  institutions  indicate.  In  1910  forty 
per  cent  of  those  in  institutions  for  the  feeble- 
minded were  between  ten  and  twenty,  nearly  thirty 
per  cent  between  twenty  and  thirty.     Perhaps  it 


106  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

might  be  better  if  these  particular  proportions  were 
reversed  by  leaving  children  under  fifteen  with 
their  parents  when  the  home  conditions  are  at  all 
favorable,  and  concentrating,  for  the  present, 
rather  on  those  from  fifteen  to  thirty  or  forty. 
Patients  of  this  kind  are,  however,  happier  in  their 
institutional  life  if  they  have  not,  before  entering 
upon  it,  been  corrupted  by  a  taste  for  drink,  dance 
halls,  and  other  low  pleasures.  While  more  than 
eighty  per  cent  of  the  insane  are  in  hospitals  or 
asylums,  less  than  ten  per  cent  of  the  feeble- 
minded in  all  are  in  institutions.  In  all  the  South 
the  census  reports  only  six  Negroes  in  special  in- 
stitutions for  the  feeble-minded  in  1910.  There  is 
as  much  need  of  institutional  care  for  the  feeble- 
minded as  for  the  insane,  both  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  comfort  and  welfare  of  the  individual 
and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  safety  and  welfare 
of  society.  They  are,  in  a  sense,  as  Dr.  Barr  points 
out,  a  waste  product,  but  one  of  the  great  culmina- 
tions of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  he  also  points 
out,  was  the  utilization  of  waste  products,  and  it  is 
an  example  of  this  that  there  has  been  recognition 
of  the  true  status  of  the  imbecile,  his  possibilities 
and  his  limitations,  and  that  there  has  been  created 
for  him  a  sphere  in  which,  trained  and  encouraged 
in  congenial  occupation,  he  may  attain  to  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  independence,  growing  to  be  no  longer 
a  menace  to  society  nor  altogether  a  helpless  bur- 
den.    Dr.  Fernald  once  estimated  that  two  in  a 


YOUTH  107 

thousand  of  the  whole  population  are  mentally 
defective.  If  in  the  manner  urged  by  all  authorities 
we  can  breed  that  element  out  of  the  population, 
or  even  half  of  it,  the  gain  will  be  beyond  calcula- 
tion. Adolescence  is  the  time  of  life  when  it  is 
most  important  that  feeble-mindedness,  if  it  exists, 
shall  be  definitely  ascertained  and  appropriately 
treated. 

JUVENILE  DELINQUENCY 
One  of  the  most  important  of  all  social  problems 
in  connection  with  adolescence  is  that  of  delin- 
quency. A  certain  amount,  given  a  proper  setting, 
safeguards,  and  antecedents,  is  altogether  normal. 
What  middle-aged  citizen  does  not  look  back  to 
adolescent  escapades  which  would  have  come  with- 
in the  law  if  the  law  had  happened  to  be  busy  at 
that  particular  spot  and  moment;  within  at  least 
that  degree  of  disfavor  which  the  French  happily 
call  "contraventions,"  and  for  which  we  have  no 
less  awkward  term  than  "violation  of  city  ordi- 
nances?" If  there  is  a  citizen  who  has  no  such 
memory,  I  fear  that  in  his  youth  he  was  not  looked 
upon  as  normal  by  his  contemporaries.  Judge 
Lindsey  points  out  that  it  is  not  for  the  most  part 
courts,  not  even  juvenile  courts  after  they  are  es- 
tablished, that  deal  with  delinquents.  Parents, 
teachers,  Sunday-school  teachers,  and  neighbors  are 
the  real  social  agencies  for  dealing  with  delinquents; 
for  quite  literally  all  healthy  normal  children,  girls 


108  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

as  well  as  boys,  are  likely  now  and  then  to  trans- 
gress the  rules.  If  they  are  fortunate  in  their  try- 
and-fail  experiments,  in  their  gradual  adaptation 
of  themselves  to  their  environmental  condition, 
they  come  into  contact  with  indulgent  but  firm  dis- 
ciplinarians, parents,  teachers,  or  it  may  be  police- 
men, who  check  their  wrong  actions  without  caus- 
ing that  deep-seated  resentment,  that  spiritual  re- 
volt against  social  control,  which  is  the  beginning 
of  an  anti-social  career  of  crime. 

A  large  number  of  offenses  are,  of  course,  purely 
conventional,  subject  to  a  necessary  condemnation 
because  of  the  environment  in  which  they  occur, 
but  in  themselves  harmless  or  even  wholly  com- 
mendable when  age  and  need  of  physical  expression 
are  considered.  Playing  ball  is  a  normal  function 
of  youth  in  a  proper  place.  Driving  a  bicycle  or 
a  motor-cycle  or  an  automobile  beyond  the  speed 
recognized  as  desirable  on  the  city  streets  is  quite 
compatible  with  a  law-abiding  spirit  if  done  in  an 
appropriate  environment.  We  need  not  multiply 
illustrations.  The  surprising  thing  is  that  young 
people,  on  the  whole,  so  naturally  cease  to  be 
"natural,"  so  normally  fit  themselves  into  the  "ab- 
normal" conventions  we  impose  upon  them,  so 
readily  demonstrate  that  they  are  fitted  for  a  social 
life,  better  fitted  by  the  complex  nature  which  is 
their  social  heritage  than  for  a  savage  life. 

And  so,  when  it  comes  to  the  delinquent  boy  in  a 
narrower  sense,  it  is  as  well  to  recognize  that  his 


YOUTH  109 

early  offenses  may  differ  mainly  in  degree  and  by 
accident  from  the  offenses  of  other  boys  who  are 
not  called  delinquent.  There  is  a  difference;  but, 
except  in  the  case  of  the  mentally  defective,  a 
large  proportion  of  those  who  are  convicted  and 
sent  to  reformatories,  this  difference  between  the 
delinquent  and  the  normal  child  is  one  not  difficult, 
or  at  least  not  impossible,  to  bridge. 

Delinquents  before  the  courts  and  in  reforma- 
tories very  often  are  found  to  be  subnormal  in 
physical  condition,  in  weight,  in  strength,  in  de- 
velopment, in  vitality,  in  acuteness  of  senses.  It 
is  sometimes  because  of  such  disadvantages  that 
they  are  caught,  while  their  more  alert  and  vigor- 
ous companions  escape.  If  these  more  alert  and 
vigorous  delinquents  escape  to  the  care  and  custody 
of  indulgent  but  firm  and  skilled  disciplinarians  in 
the  person  of  their  own  parents,  or  others  who  have 
influence  over  them,  no  harm  may  come  of  their 
having  escaped,  but  rather  good.  If,  however, 
they  escape  from  their  first  experiences  without 
warning  or  arrest,  to  fall  upon  other  lines,  there 
may  be  very  serious  consequences  indeed. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  better  for  the  petty  thief,  the 
juvenile  law-breaker,  to  be  caught.  The  one  who 
is  taken  into  custody  is  reasonably  certain  in  the 
present  state  of  public  opinion — it  was  not  always 
so — to  have  his  first  chance  to  reform,  as  a  result 
of  warning  and  paternal  counsel.  He  is  only  too 
likely   to  have  his  second   and   third   chance — so 


110  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

many  chances  that  if  he  does  not  profit  by  them  he 
may  come  to  lose  respect  for  authority  and  to 
speculate  with  adolescent  precocity  on  the  curious 
turns  of  the  wheel  by  which  an  all-too-blind  justice 
distributes  her  penalties  and  favors.  This  was 
especially  so  in  the  still  so  recent  dark  ages,  when 
youthful  and  adult  criminals  were  penalized  ac- 
cording to  a  fixed  scale  of  punishments,  rigidly 
prescribed  in  the  penal  codes — so  many  months  or 
years  for  one  offense  and  so  many  for  another, 
regardless  of  the  personal  equation,  regardless  of 
all  the  differing  traits  and  circumstances  which, 
rightly  understood,  give  the  only  basis  for  deciding 
what  treatment  is  desirable.  It  is  better  for  the 
boy  and  the  girl  who  go  wrong  to  be  caught,  but  it 
is  well  that  society,  having  made  the  capture,  does 
not  itself  go  wrong. 

The  modern  social  paraphernalia  for  dealing  with 
juvenile  delinquency  includes  parental  schools  for 
truants;  kindly  but  vigilant  truant  officers,  who 
are  not  policemen  but  teachers,  as  we  might  say, 
on  scout  duty;  juvenile  courts  and  courts  of  do- 
mestic relations,  disciplining  mainly  parents  and 
translating  the  corrigibility  of  the  child  into  the 
correctional  ability  of  the  parent  and  teacher,  of 
which  the  boy  unwittingly  gives  evidence;  proba- 
tion officers,  men  and  women,  who  are  sometimes 
to  the  judge  what  the  trained  nurse  is  to  the  physi- 
cian, and  sometimes  more  like  the  consulting 
specialist,  to  whose  professional  skill  and  insight 


YOUTH  111 

the  regular  practitioner  gladly  defers ;  reformatories 
and  industrial  schools  and  colonies  for  feeble- 
minded— a  series  of  educational  and  remedial 
agencies  which,  among  them,  make  prisons  and 
jails  for  young  offenders  obsolete  and  discredited, 
useless  and  impossible. 

One  feature  of  social  construction  affecting  ju- 
venile crime  is  the  socialization  of  police  systems, 
increased  emphasis  on  prevention  of  crimes,  and 
diminishing  emphasis  on  making  a  record  for  ar- 
rest and  convictions.  Another  is  that  develop- 
ment of  the  school  system  which  provides  a  greater 
variety  of  instruction,  and  especially  that  which 
connects  the  school  with  occupational  interests  and 
increases  the  efficiency  of  workers.  Another  is  the 
provision,  through  various  voluntary  agencies, 
above  all,  perhaps,  through  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Associations  and  similar  agencies,  of 
facilities  for  recreation,  for  amusement,  for  the 
rational  use  of  leisure.  Boys'  and  men's  clubs 
in  churches,  settlements,  and  elsewhere  serve  the 
purpose  of  giving  a  healthy  outlet  for  normal,  but 
too  often  perverted,  instincts — social  instincts. 

I  speak  of  boys  and  men,  rather  than  of  girls  and 
women,  only  because  they  are  more  often  delin- 
quent. Of  the  twenty-five  thousand  juvenile  de- 
linquents in  institutions  on  January  first  of  the 
census  year,  six  thousand  were  females  and  nine- 
teen thousand  males — more  than  three  times  as 
many.     Of  a  little  over  fourteen  thousand  com- 


112  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

mitted  to  institutions  in  the  year  1910,  nearly 
twelve  thousand  were  males.  In  Maryland  in  that 
year  more  than  ten  times  as  many  males  as  females 
were  committed.  The  most  interesting  fact  in  the 
analysis  of  the  offenses  for  which  these  children  and 
youths  were  committed  is  that  eight  hundred  and 
forty  of  a  total  of  eleven  hundred  and  eighty-two 
in  Maryland,  and  more  than  half  of  the  twenty-five 
thousand  in  the  United  States,  are  in  custody  for 
what  are  called  "other  offenses,"  or  for  "two  or 
more  offenses,"  with  no  information  as  to  what 
they  are.  If  that  item  alone  does  not  lay  bare  the 
need  for  better  statistics  of  delinquency,  no  elabo- 
ration of  argument  would  do  it.  It  would  be  a 
satisfaction  to  believe,  as  the  statistics  seem  to  say, 
that  no  juveniles  were  in  custody  in  Maryland  for 
homicide  or  fraud  or  rape  or  violating  the  liquor 
law,  but  there  remains  the  uncomfortable  suspicion 
that  that  sundry  item,  containing  all  the  "two  or 
more  offenses,"  may  possibly  conceal  any  number 
of  such  crimes.  That  there  were  one  hundred  and 
six  who  had  been  convicted  of  larceny  or  burglary, 
twenty-nine  of  prostitution  or  allied  offenses,  and 
one  hundred  and  ninety-seven  of  vagrancy,  has 
significance,  especially  since  these  are  also  the 
largest  items  of  offenses  for  the  United  States,  al- 
ways excepting  that  more  than  fifty  per  cent  of 
"other"  and  compound  offenses. 

It  is  interesting  also  that  in  Maryland  there  was 
only  a  single  juvenile  delinquent  who  was  serving  a 


YOUTH  113 

fixed  sentence  of  more  than  three  years,  while 
there  were  over  seven  hundred  such  sentences  in 
other  states.  It  is  cheerful  to  reflect  that  this 
solitary  boy's  time  will  be  up  before  the  next  cen- 
sus, if  it  is  not  already,  as  he  was  in  for  only  six 
years,  and  we  may  hope  that  he  has  no  successor. 
All  but  thirty-five,  however,  of  the  juvenile  de- 
linquents of  Maryland — including  twenty-three 
who  were  technically  on  indeterminate  sentence — 
were  committed  for  the  period  of  their  minority, 
which,  I  presume,  in  practice  becomes  an  indeter- 
minate sentence,  so  far  as  confinement  within  the 
walls  of  an  institution  is  concerned,  the  guardian- 
ship remaining  with  the  institution  unless  ter- 
minated by  court  order,  adoption,  or  otherwise. 

The  time  when  crimes  occur  is  not  a  time  when 
society  can  effectively  discharge  its  full  responsi- 
bility in  regard  to  them.  Public  intoxication  and 
disorderly  conduct  show  on  the  police  court  calen- 
dars as  offenses  of  middle  life  and  even  of  old  age, 
but  the  problem  of  inebriety — of  drunkenness,  to 
use  an  uglier  and  no  shorter  word — is  mainly  one 
of  youth  and  early  maturity.  Larceny,  burglary, 
fraud,  assaults,  rape,  arson,  and  homicide  are  com- 
mitted at  all  ages,  but  the  determination  of  char- 
acter which  will  show  itself  from  time  to  time  ac- 
cording to  its  nature  takes  place  in  youth. 

There  are  qualities  which  are  permanently  in- 
herent in  the  germ  plasm.  We  are  considering  here, 
however,   that  individual  character,  whether  in- 


114  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

herited  or  acquired,  which  belongs  to  the  individ- 
ual in  his  normal  progress  from  his  own  cradle  to 
that  of  his  grandchildren,  the  particular  set  of 
traits  which  he  actually  exhibits  in  his  relations 
with  his  fellows,  in  his  career  in  the  flesh.  These 
traits  may,  indeed,  be  what  a  biologist  might  call 
body-characters,  a  fortuitous  and  transitory  pos- 
session of  the  particular  individual,  rather  than  de- 
terminant-bearing chromosomes  of  the  cell  nucleus, 
carried  along  by  the  individual  merely  as  a  trustee 
of  his  racial  stock,  or  they  may  be  the  more  ephem- 
eral but  surely  not  unimportant  qualities  which 
belong  to  the  individual  himself,  gained  not  from 
his  inheritance,  but  from  his  education  and  envi- 
ronment. We  are  not  concerned  at  this  stage  with 
concealed  defects  of  seed  plasm,  but  with  the  man 
himself,  body  and  living  spirit,  as  he  lives  among  us. 
Of  this  man  we  may  say  with  confidence  that 
whether  he  is  to  be  temperate  or  intemperate,  shift- 
less or  energetic,  a  deserter  or  a  steady  and  re- 
sponsible family  man,  a  drone  or  a  worker,  a  crim- 
inal or  a  law-abiding  member  of  society,  a  parasite 
or  a  self-dependent,  surplus-producing  creditor  of 
society,  an  exploiter  or  a  socialized  captain  of  in- 
dustry,— if  his  abilities  give  him  this  alternative, — 
all  this  depends  largely  on  the  educational  in- 
fluences, conscious  and  unconscious,  brought  to 
bear  upon  him  in  the  formative  period  of  life.  As 
the  twig  is  bent,  the  tree's  inclined.  It  is  an  irri- 
tatingly  trite  and  a  profoundly  true  saying. 


IV 

MATURITY: 

WORK 


STAGES  OF  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 
Man's  normal  life,  though  it  has  its  crises,  is  not 
sharply  divided  into  census  age-periods.  We  have 
refrained  from  setting  precise  boundaries  to  its 
stages  of  development,  adopting  words  in  ordinary 
use  in  their  popular  sense  to  suggest  them.  In- 
dividuals differ  widely  both  in  physical  and  in  social 
development,  some  passing  earlier  and  some  later 
from  infancy  to  childhood,  from  childhood  into 
adolescence,  and  from  youth  to  maturity. 

Infancy  seems  to  begin  definitely  enough  with 
birth,  but  even  there  we  have  had  to  push  the 
boundary  back  to  grandparents  and  remote  an- 
cestors, as  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  another 
sense,  long  ago  advised.  We  closed  that  first  chap- 
ter at  about  the  time  of  the  first  birthday  anniver- 
sary. Childhood  then  begins  at  the  point  when 
education  in  its  broadest  sense  begins  to  assume 
greater  importance  than  food. 

Adolescence  is  the  period  of  growing  up,  i.  e.,  from 
children  into  men  and  women.  Babies  and  chil- 
dren "grow";  boys  and  girls  "grow  up."  The 
physiological  transition  begins  to  be  apparent  at 
different  ages  in  different  races  and  climates  and  in 
different  individuals,  and  the  time  required  for  the 
process  varies.     Physiologists  are  inclined  to  place 

117 


118  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

it  farther  along  than  eighteen  and  twenty-one,  the 
years  at  which  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  consid- 
ering that  youths  and  maidens  come  of  age,  as  the 
changes  are  not  completely  established,  stability 
and  equilibrium  not  entirely  assured,  until  a  few 
years  later, — perhaps  at  about  twenty-five.  The 
tendency  in  education  and  in  economic  relations  is 
in  the  direction  of  making  the  "social"  period  of 
adolescence  coterminous  with  the  physiological. 

By  maturity  we  mean  the  point  at  which  the 
individual  has  arrived  at  full  growth  and  develop- 
ment— by  natural  process,  as  the  Latin  word  sug- 
gests— not  the  maturity  into  which  children  are 
forced  when  set  to  work  to  support  the  family,  or  to 
assume  other  burdens  and  responsibilities  which 
properly  belong  to  adult  life.  An  adult  is  a  person 
who  has  grown  up.  It  is  the  past  participle  of 
adolescere,  and  this  word  adolescere  is  akin  to  alere, 
which  means  "to  nourish."  So  the  past  participle 
adult  may  be  taken  socially  to  mean,  as  it  should, 
both  grown  up  and  nourished. 

The  stages  of  development  merge  gently  into  one 
another  in  the  individual  life,  as  in  larger  groups. 
If  boys  still  think  proudly,  on  their  twenty-first 
birthday,  that  now  they  have  arrived  at  man's 
full  estate,  there  are  almost  sure  to  be  several  oc- 
casions after  that  when  they  will  doubt  their  claim 
to  the  title,  or  to  which,  at  any  rate,  they  will  look 
back  from  the  heights  of  fifty  or  sixty  with  wonder 
that  so  crude  and  unbalanced  a  youngster  had  been 


MATURITY  119 

allowed  such  freedom.  This  is  not  necessarily 
proof,  however,  that  his  family  or  society  showed 
poor  judgment  in  leaving  him  at  large.  There  has 
to  be  a  period  of  learning  by  experience,  however 
careful  and  wise  the  preparation  which  has  been 
given.  A  girl's  eighteenth  birthday  does  not  ordi- 
narily mean  much  more  to  her  than  her  sixteenth 
or  nineteenth,  unless  she  happens  to  be  an  heiress. 
Probably  to  the  average  girl  the  twentieth,  when  she 
"passes  out  of  her  teens,"  seems  more  significant, 
both  to  her,  eagerly  looking  ahead,  and  to  her 
family  and  friends,  to  whom  she  seems  to  be  hurry- 
ing on  unnecessarily.  The  milestone  into  "middle 
age"  is  even  more  moveable.  Nowadays  a  woman 
may  say  to  herself  at  forty,  "I  suppose  after  this  I 
shall  be  middle-aged,"  but  she  does  not  take  any 
steps  to  announce  it  in  her  dress  or  her  activities, 
and  she  probably  says  it  again,  with  similar  results, 
at  forty-five  and  fifty  and — who  shall  say  how  long? 
As  for  old  age,  in  the  traditional  acceptance  of  that 
term,  both  men  and  women  have  repudiated  it. 

The  period  of  life  which  we  are  now  to  consider 
begins,  then,  at  the  end  of  youth,  when  the  young 
man  and  the  young  woman,  brought  to  the  thresh- 
old of  maturity — of  body,  mind,  and  soul — by  the 
affectionate,  sympathetic,  and  intelligent  nurture 
of  the  family  and  the  state,  is  ready  to  assume  the 
toga  virilis,  to  become  an  active  participant  in  the 
economic  and  social  and  political  life  of  the  com- 
munity,  no  longer   primarily   a  consumer   and   a 


120  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

beneficiary,  but  henceforth  producer  as  well  as 
consumer,  contributor  as  well  as  beneficiary.  If 
the  conditions  which  we  have  found  to  be  neces- 
sary for  normal  infancy,  childhood,  and  youth  have 
been  met,  our  normal  population  arrives  at  man- 
hood in  physical  vigor,  untainted  by  disease,  by  in- 
dulgence in  vice  and  idleness,  unweakened  by  over- 
work, with  minds  and  muscles  and  ideals  trained 
for  efficient  work  and  efficient  home  life. 

THE  ADULT  POPULATION 
The  first  time  you  look  at  the  chart  of  the  popu- 
lation of  this  country  by  ages  you  will  be  surprised. 
What  will  puzzle  you  is  that  there  are  more  chil- 
dren two  years  old  than  one,  and  that  there  are 
about  as  many  alive  at  twenty,  at  twenty-five,  and 
even  at  thirty  as  there  were  at  one  and  two  and  five. 
We  know  that  a  lot  of  the  babies  did  not  live  to  be 
a  year  old,  that  there  were  many  deaths  before  five, 
and  some — though  a  smaller  number — at  every 
year  afterward. 

What  an  extraordinary  pyramid  this  is — or 
rather  a  pyramid  on  top  of  a  prism — which  does  not 
begin  to  show  any  effect  from  deaths  until  nearly 
middle  age!  The  explanation  is,  of  course,  simple 
— immigration. 

If  you  take  the  pyramid  of  native-born  only,  it 
tapers  off  normally  enough,  fewer  at  every  age  than 
in  the  group  below;  in  our  whole  population,  how- 
ever, in  the  years  of  childhood,  adolescence,  and 


MATURITY  121 

early  maturity  the  deaths  are  compensated,  mathe- 
matically speaking,  by  the  arrival  of  immigrants. 
The  net  result  is  that  we  have  actually  at  twenty, 
and  very  nearly  at  thirty,  as  large  a  population 
as  at  one,  and  even  after  forty  it  does  not  taper  ofT 
as  rapidly  as  it  would  if  we  did  not  have  ready- 
made  boys  and  girls,  ready-made  men  and  women, 
coming  in  all  the  time. 

Because  of  immigration,  then,  we  have,  especially 
in  the  northern  cities,  an  abnormally  constituted 
population.  This  helps  to  solve  some  problems  and 
makes  easier  in  certain  respects  the  task  of  social 
construction.  It  makes  our  civilization  richer  by 
the  content  of  the  varied  racial  and  national  con- 
tributions. It  makes  society  industrially  more 
productive  because  of  the  excess  at  the  working 
ages.  The  ebb  and  flow  of  steerage  passage  to  the 
Mediterranean  help  to  furnish  an  elastic  labor 
supply  as  well  as  to  solve  the  problem  of  "cheap 
labor,"  speaking  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  who 
consider  cheap  labor  desirable.  But  immigration 
adds  also  to  our  problems  of  crime,  of  exploitation, 
and  of  maladjustment.  Recent  immigrants  are 
more  easily  sweated,  crowded,  underpaid,  de- 
frauded. They  make  necessary  much  work  by  the 
government  simply  because  of  their  misunderstand- 
ings and  mistakes,  and  because  of  our  mistakes  and 
misunderstandings  of  them. 


122  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

PERMANENT  REGISTRATION 
Taking  our  population  as  it  is,  the  first  serious 
task  of  social  construction  is  to  make  it  possible  to 
know  more  about  it. 

Our  national  count  we  make  once  in  ten  years, 
with  supplementary  studies  from  time  to  time  car- 
ried out  by  the  permanent  census  bureau  which 
our  government  now  boasts.  Thus  we  have  de- 
cided that  it  is  not  a  sin  to  be  counted  at  regular, 
not  too  frequent,  intervals.  It  was  not  always  so. 
You  remember  how  it  was  in  the  days  of  David 
and  Joab,  as  the  story  is  told  in  Samuel  and  in 
Chronicles.  In  his  old  age  David  was  tempted  by 
Satan  to  have  the  number  of  his  people  counted. 
He  told  Joab  to  have  it  done.  Joab  was  much  aston- 
ished. "Now  the  Lord  thy  God,"  he  said,  "add 
unto  the  people,  how  many  soever  they  may  be,  a 
hundred  fold,  and  they  will  all  be  there  just  the 
same,  whether  you  count  them  or  not — no  fewer  and 
no  more.  Why  do  you  want  them  numbered  ?"  His 
idea  seems  to  have  been  that  it  was  fighting  edge 
and  a  good  cause  and  the  Lord's  sanction — not 
numbers — that  counted.  Nevertheless,  David's 
word  prevailed.  After  nine  months  and  twenty 
days  Joab  got  the  census  taken,  finding  that  there 
were  eight  hundred  thousand  valiant  men  in  the 
armies  of  Israel  and  five  hundred  thousand  in  those 
of  Judah.  Chronicles  makes  it  a  round  million 
instead  of  Samuel's  eight  hundred  thousand,  but 


MATURITY  123 

that  comes  nearer  than  some  current  official  counts 
and  estimates  of  the  size  of  armies. 

As  soon  as  it  was  done  David's  heart  smote  him 
and  he  knew  that  he  had  sinned  greatly  and  done  a 
great  iniquity  and  had  been  very  foolish.  When  he 
had  his  choice  of  three  penalties,  seven  years  of 
famine,  or  to  flee  before  his  enemies  three  months, 
or  a  three  days'  pestilence,  he  chose  the  last — as 
any  modern  king  would  have  done — and  seventy 
thousand  perished.  And  then  David  bethought 
himself — as  any  modern  king  might  not  have  done 
— to  take  the  blame  on  himself,  and  said:  "I  was 
responsible  for  that  census.  What  have  these 
sheep  done?"  And  so  he  made  a  sacrifice  and  was 
forgiven. 

When  the  suggestion  is  made  that  the  time  has 
now  come  when  we  in  this  country  should  all  be 
officially  registered,  with  our  finger-prints,  and  with 
a  constantly  corrected  address,  every  birth,  every 
removal,  and  every  death  being  reported  under 
penalty  of  the  law,  the  proposal  is  apt  to  be  greeted 
perhaps  much  as  the  king's  impious  proposal  was 
greeted  by  Joab.  We  of  free  English  traditions, 
with  our  touchiness  as  to  personal  liberty,  are  apt 
to  feel  that  any  public  record,  even  of  the  fact  of 
our  existence  and  where  we  are,  much  more  what 
whorls  our  finger-tips  may  please  to  sport,  is  a 
gross  infringement  of  inalienable  prerogatives. 

Yet  it  is  so,  that  the  basis  of  a  sound  compre- 
hensive policy  of  social  construction  demands  more 


124  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

certainty  than  we  now  have — demands  a  general 
registration  of  the  whole  population,  stationary  and 
shifting,  native  and  immigrant,  sick  and  well, 
feeble-minded  and  strong-minded,  criminal  and 
law-abiding,  new-born  and  moribund,  legitimate 
and  illegitimate,  of  school  age  and  of  fighting  age, 
rural  and  urban,  industrial  and  professional,  infant, 
child,  youth,  and  adult. 

We  already  have  various  kinds  of  registration 
under  federal,  state,  municipal,  or  voluntary  aus- 
pices: such  as  registration  for  voting,  registration 
by  charitable  agencies,  the  school  census,  and  the 
registration  of  land  titles.  One  can  easily  count 
more  than  fifty  different  registrations,  each  affect- 
ing a  very  considerable  part  of  the  population,  and 
overlapping  one  another  in  a  most  extraordinary 
degree.  Replacing  some  of  these  and  perfecting 
all  of  them,  there  should  be  one  complete  official 
registration  of  the  entire  population,  accessible  to 
all  who  have  legitimate  occasion  to  consult  it, 
serving  the  purposes  of  health,  education,  police, 
election  inspectors,  tax  assessors,  county  clerks  and 
sheriffs  and  other  public  officials,  and  also  such 
voluntary  agencies — churches,  lodges,  charitable 
societies,  tradesmen  and  others — as  have  occasion 
to  know  the  whereabouts  and  the  family  relation- 
ships of  their  customers  or  applicants  or  members, 
as  the  case  may  be. 

Several  countries  in  Europe  have  some  such 
complete  and  constantly  corrected  registration  of 


MATURITY  125 

the  whole  population.  It  has  shown  its  utility  in 
war;  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  it  has  con- 
tinuously shown  its  value  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion in  peace.  Beginning  with  any  federal  census 
year,  when  the  whereabouts  and  the  social  status  of 
the  whole  population  are  known,  it  would  only  be 
necessary  to  distribute  the  original  enumerators' 
schedules  to  some  local  census  authority,  probably 
the  health  department,  and  for  the  latter  (after 
transferring  the  information  presumably  to  5  x  8 
cards)  to  provide  for  keeping  up  the  record  by  in- 
corporating the  reports  of  births  and  deaths,  al- 
ready required,  and  securing  reports  of  removals 
as  they  occur.  If  a  finger-print  accompanied 
every  registration,  and  each  person  were  supplied 
with  an  identification  card  containing  his  name, 
date  of  birth,  and  finger-print,  the  system  would  be 
complete. 

The  operation  of  election  laws  would  be  simpli- 
fied by  a  complete,  constantly  corrected,  regis- 
tration; thousands  of  persons  arrested  for  petty 
offenses,  now  thrown  into  jail,  could  be  allowed  to 
go  until  the  time  set  for  the  hearing,  for  they  could 
always  be  found  when  wanted  if  they  failed  to 
appear.  School  attendance,  school  planning,  the 
enforcement  of  child-labor  laws,  would  all  be  simpli- 
fied. No  honest  man  would  have  anything  to  lose 
by  such  a  registration.  Homeless,  irresponsible 
people  might  not  get  the  full  benefit  of  it,  but  all 
would  reap  advantages  innumerable  from  the  wiser 


126  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

plans  which  could  be  based  upon  it.  If  those  who 
do  not  at  first  like  the  idea  will  let  it  sink  in,  digest 
it  by  thinking  about  it  in  relation  to  social  prob- 
lems, they  may  come  to  realize  how  harmless  it  is, 
how  fair  it  is,  how  democratic  it  is,  how  much  less 
expensive  than  it  seems  at  first  sight  because  of  the 
other  registrations  it  would  save  or  simplify,  how 
much  it  would  contribute  to  a  policy  of  social  con- 
struction. It  is  a  problem  of  maturity  in  the  sense 
that  heads  of  families  would  be  responsible  for  the 
registration,  voters  would  have  to  authorize  it, 
able  administrators  would  have  to  work  out  the 
details  of  it,  and  it  takes  a  somewhat  maturely 
social-minded  citizen  to  consent  to  it. 

THE  PROBLEMS  OF  MATURITY 
The  two  big  universal  normal  interests  of  both 
men  and  women  in  the  early  years  of  maturity  are 
work  and  home.  They  are  in  a  sense  rivals.  We 
have  been  regaled  by  the  conceit  of  a  wife's  suit  for 
separation  based  on  the  alienation  of  affections  by  a 
defendant  called  the  day's  work.  There  are  other 
important  interests,  of  course,  for  all:  participa- 
tion in  political  life,  for  example,  or  church  activi- 
ties, or  going  to  lectures.  But  for  most  of  us  such 
activities  do  not  compare  in  immediacy  of  interest 
with  our  activities  as  workers  and  as  heads  of  fami- 
lies. These  other  interests  are  absorbed  in  the  two 
great  interests,  or  incidental  and  subordinate  to 
them,  even  when  they  are  fully  recognized  and 
appreciated. 


MATURITY  127 

Work  is  popular  in  America.  The  necessity 
which  pushes  us  is  not  external,  but  internal  and 
welcome.  We  hardly  have  a  "leisure  class"  at  all 
of  rich  or  aristocratic  idlers,  in  spite  of  the  best 
efforts  of  "society  reporters" ;  and  at  the  other  end 
nearly  every  one  can  earn  a  living  and  is  willing 
enough  to  do  so.  Ninety-seven  per  cent  of  the  men 
between  twenty-one  and  forty-five  years  of  age 
were  reported  by  the  census  in  1910  as  "engaged  in 
gainful  occupations,"  and  over  one-fourth  of  the 
women. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  a  great  many  of  them 
had  not  waited  for  the  age  of  twenty-one  before 
going  to  work.  Some  of  them  began  at  ten  and 
even  earlier.  Between  sixteen  and  twenty-one, 
four-fifths  of  the  young  men  and  two-fifths  of  the 
girls  were  employed — eighty  per  cent  and  forty  per 
cent,  respectively;  a  larger  proportion,  that  is,  of 
the  girls  under  twenty-one  than  of  the  women  over 
that  age.  Young  women  in  the  early  twenties 
have  a  way  of  transferring  their  big  normal  per- 
manent interest  from  work  to  home;  young  men 
have  also,  but  their  best  way  of  showing  the  in- 
terest in  their  home  is  to  take  more  rather  than  less 
interest  in  their  work. 

The  proportion  of  idle  men  does  not  vary  ap- 
preciably in  different  parts  of  the  country,  the  lar- 
gest number  being  five  per  hundred  in  Vermont, 
North  and  South  Dakota,  and  the  District  of  Co- 
lumbia, and  the  fewest  (2.2  to  2.5  per  cent)  being 


128  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

found  in  Mississippi  and  Alabama,  South  Caro- 
lina, Wyoming,  and  Rhode  Island.  The  most  in- 
dustrious population  of  women — although  it  may 
be  better  to  use  strictly  the  language  of  the  census, 
since  housewives,  who  are  not  included  among  those 
engaged  in  gainful  occupations,  are  well  known  to 
be  the  most  industrious  of  women — the  largest 
proportion  of  women  gainfully  employed  are  in 
South  Carolina,  Mississippi,  Alabama,  and  other 
southern  states.  This  is  explained  by  the  large 
number  of  Negro  women,  nearly  all  of  whom  are 
reported  as  employed.  In  Massachusetts  thirty- 
nine  per  cent  of  the  women  from  twenty-one  to 
forty-five  were  gainfully  employed,  and  by  contrast 
only  about  fifteen  per  cent  in  West  Virginia,  Okla- 
homa, Idaho,  and  New  Mexico. 

THE  UNEMPLOYED 

It  is  the  usual  thing,  then,  as  well  as  the  normal 
thing,  for  American  men  in  the  first  half  of  their 
mature  years  to  be  employed — sufficiently,  at  any 
rate,  to  be  counted  among  the  workers  by  the  cen- 
sus enumerators.  Not  all  of  them,  however,  are 
employed  steadily,  or  as  much  as  they  would  like 
to  be,  and  there  are  some  abnormally  situated  in- 
dividuals who  either  do  not  work  at  all  or  who  are 
seriously  underemployed. 

Some  of  these  are  quite  normal,  after  all.  They 
are  still  "pursuing"  that  coy  creature,  an  educa- 
tion;   or  they  are  taking  a  year  off  for  travel  and 


MATURITY  129 

recreation;  or  they  are,  here  and  there  in  rare  in- 
stances, deliberately  leading  the  life  of  a  scholar  or 
an  amateur  of  some  art  or  devoting  themselves  to 
the  service  of  the  public  in  some  way  or  other,  the 
only  difference  between  them  and  many  others 
being  that  their  useful  activity  is  not  brought  into 
the  market.  It  may  be  said  in  the  same  way  that 
the  great  majority  of  the  "unemployed"  women 
are  so  only  technically,  being  in  fact  economic  pro- 
ducers, or  performing  even  more  valuable  economic 
functions  than  production  in  the  strict  sense,  by 
their  management  of  whatever  income  is  brought 
into  the  home.  Since  the  values  which  women  in 
the  home  add  to  the  goods  we  consume,  and  the 
services  they  render,  do  not  pass  through  a  market 
they  do  not  receive  a  money  valuation. 

Among  the  abnormally  unemployed  are  first  the 
really  idle  rich:  those  who  are  not  dependent  on 
their  own  exertions,  who  would  answer  to  one  part 
of  the  definition  of  vagrancy — that  they  are  with- 
out regular  employment — even  if  not  to  the  other 
— that  they  are  without  visible  means  of  support; 
who,  in  consequence  of  their  natural  tastes  or  the 
character  of  their  education,  prefer  indolence  or 
morbid  pleasures  to  rational  activity.  Happily 
these  are  few,  and  the  application  of  better  methods 
of  education  to  the  children  of  the  rich  will  gradu- 
ally eliminate  most  of  them. 

More  numerous,  unhappily,  are  those  who  are 
not  able  to  do  anything  for  which   the  world  is 


130  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

willing  to  pay,  or  who  are  not  able  to  make  con- 
nections with  an  employer  who  could  use  their 
services.  Those  who  are  unemployed  because  they 
are  unemployable,  through  physical  or  mental  de- 
fect or  illness,  or  lack  of  training  and  guidance,  we 
may  hope  to  see  reduced  to  a  mere  handful,  and 
no  social  problem,  after  we  have  done  even  for 
one  generation  the  things  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  essential  to  normal  childhood  and  youth. 
Voluntary  and  compulsory  industrial  and  farm 
colonies,  with  work  in  shops  and  work  on  the  land, 
will  be  among  the  necessary  means  of  bringing 
about  a  reduction  in  the  number  of  unemployable. 
For  the  really  degenerate,  unteachable,  and  un- 
responsive to  discipline  there  is  nothing  for  it  ex- 
cept segregation, — employment  at  public  cost 
under  direction, — but  we  must  approach  that  solu- 
tion with  patience  and  minds  open  to  the  evidence 
which  is  slowly  accumulating. 

The  unemployable  are  thus  separable  by  careful 
scrutiny  into  two  wholly  distinct  groups  of  (i) 
subnormal,  unteachably  inefficient,  and  (2)  those 
who  with  opportunity  and  instruction  can  become 
employable. 

But,  besides  all  these,  there  is  in  almost  all  parts 
of  our  country,  in  good  times  as  well  as  in  periods 
of  depression,  a  very  considerable  number  of  em- 
ployable, capable  persons  in  need  of  work  who  are 
not  actually  employed.  Among  the  causes  of  this 
unsatisfactory  failure  to  make  use  of  usable  labor 


MATURITY  131 

force  are  immigration  and  migration  from  place  to 
place  within  the  country,  fluctuations  in  the  de- 
mand for  certain  commodities  and  services,  the 
seasonal  character  of  certain  occupations,  the  vari- 
able fortunes  of  particular  employers,  especially  of 
large  employing  corporations,  the  absence  of  ade- 
quate agencies  for  diffusing  reliable  information 
about  conditions  in  the  labor  market,  and  the  lack 
of  a  satisfactory  system  for  classifying  workmen  and 
work  according  to  their  essential  abilities  and  re- 
quirements, respectively,  rather  than  according  to 
superficial  and  accidental  characteristics. 

Whether  or  not  the  labor  force  of  the  entire 
country,  viewed  as  an  undifferentiated  abstraction, 
is  more  or  less  than  is  needed,  or  exactly  the  amount 
that  is  needed,  to  perform  the  work  which  at  a 
given  moment  is  waiting  to  be  done, — the  work 
being  viewed  also  as  an  undifferentiated  abstrac- 
tion,— is  a  question  of  pure  academic' speculation, 
such  a  problem  as  would  have  delighted  the  me- 
diaeval schoolmen. 

The  labor  force  of  the  country  cannot  in  reality 
be  looked  upon  as  one  huge  office  staff  or  factory 
force  or  industrial  army  which  can  be  assigned  and 
distributed,  according  to  the  aptitudes  of  the  work- 
ers, on  the  one  hand,  and  the  demands  of  the  work, 
on  the  other,  by  some  competent  directing  genius. 
Nor  is  the  work  to  be  done  one  huge  comprehensive 
enterprise,  like  the  Panama  Canal,  which  can  be 
planned  from  a  central  office  with  no  regard  to  any- 


132  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

thing  except  efficiency  and  an  economical  applica- 
tion of  the  labor  force  and  plant. 

An  infinite  number  of  influences  takes  the  place 
of  the  directing  genius,  counteracting,  compensat- 
ing, supplementing,  correcting,  and  limiting  one 
another  in  an  infinite  variety  of  ways,  with  the 
result  that  the  industry  of  the  country,  taken  as  a 
whole,  seems  more  like  an  exceedingly  sensitive 
living  organism  than  like  a  department  store  or  a 
canal  contract. 

These  various  influences,  however,  have  not  yet 
succeeded  in  bringing  about  as  much  of  an  adjust- 
ment as  is  desirable.  There  are  certain  communi- 
ties, especially  the  large  cities,  in  which  there  is 
some  surplus  labor  most  of  the  time,  while  in  other 
communities  at  the  same  time  there  may  be  an 
urgent  demand  for  both  skilled  and  unskilled  labor. 
In  periods  of  depression,  such  as  the  present  win- 
ter, the  unemployed  gather  in  the  cities,  swelling 
this  surplus  to  serious  proportions. 

REMEDIAL  MEASURES 
To  bring  about  some  sort  of  adjustment  at  such 
times  some  immediate  relief  measures  are  neces- 
sary. One  of  them  is  an  expansion  of  the  work  of 
the  ordinary  relief  agencies.  Prompt  and  liberal 
relief  in  cases  of  actual  distress  is  appropriate  at 
all  times,  but  especially  in  times  when  distress  is 
augmented  by  unemployment.  Carefully  man- 
aged loan  funds — pawnshops,  chattel  loan  socie- 


MATURITY  133 

ties,  and  even  loans  on  personal  character  without 
any  material  security — are  a  valuable  means  of 
helping  those  who  do  not  often  or  easily  bring  them- 
selves to  apply  to  charitable  agencies.  Special 
benefit  features  in  trade  unions,  including  loans  to 
be  repaid,  with  or  without  interest,  are  especially 
helpful  in  such  emergencies.  Employment  at 
modest,  but  not  too  modest,  wages  in  community 
workshops  for  the  making  of  bandages,  cobbling  of 
shoes,  and  carpentry  jobs,  and  the  more  thorough 
cleaning  of  streets  under  the  direction  of  the  regu- 
lar municipal  authorities,  are  illustrations  of  bene- 
ficial emergency  measures.  They  have  their 
drawbacks  and  weak  spots  that  need  watching, 
but  they  do  lighten  the  hardships  of  the  unem- 
ployed and  interfere  in  the  least  imaginable  degree 
with  the  resumption  of  that  kind  of  industry  which 
prosperity  ushers  in.  Such  emergency  measures 
may  meet  the  immediate  need,  but  something  more 
wide-reaching  and  permanent  is  needed  also. 

A  series  of  efficient  employment  bureaus  through- 
out the  country,  organized  to  supply  accurate  in- 
formation about  conditions  and  to  analyze  em- 
ployees and  positions,  with  facilities  for  intercom- 
munication and  publicity,  could  do  a  great  deal 
toward  matching  up  the  unemployed  with  oppor- 
tunities for  work,  and  should  be  established. 

The  problem  is  not  entirely,  however,  a  problem 
of  matching  up  in  this  way.  On  the  whole,  it  may 
be  that  we  have  about  as  much  mobility  of  labor  as 


134  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

is  desirable.  "Labor"  seems  to  find  a  way  to  flow 
around  very  freely.  Greater  discrimination  as  to 
the  direction  it  should  take  would  be  a  gain,  and 
this  the  employment  bureau  can  help  to  supply. 
Absolute  fluidity  of  the  labor  force,  however, 
though  theoretically  desirable  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  labor  market  considered  an  abstract 
and  isolated  phenomenon,  is  hardly  a  goal  to  pro- 
pose for  our  efforts.  There  are  social  advantages — 
economic,  too,  in  the  long  run — in  a  certain  degree 
of  stability  of  population.  Theoretically,  the 
Baltimore  operators  on  men's  clothing  who  are 
thrown  out  of  work  in  their  dull  season  in  Sep- 
tember might  find  work  at  their  own  trade  in  Chi- 
cago, where  this  industry  is  at  its  height  at  that 
time;  or  some  of  the  Washington  lumbermen  and 
loggers  who  are  idle  in  January  might  be  welcome 
just  then  in  Maine.  Probably  individuals  here 
and  there  do  make  such  changes  to  decided  ad- 
vantage. But  that  several  thousand,  in  each  of 
many  trades,  should  do  so  regularly  every  year, 
between  all  the  important  manufacturing  centers 
of  the  country,  whether  they  migrated  back  and 
forth  as  families  or  individuals,  would  hardly  be 
feasible,  and  would  be  demoralizing  if  it  were.  The 
chief  service  of  employment  bureaus  probably  lies 
in  making  adjustments  of  workers  to  jobs  in  their 
own  locality,  between  different  plants  in  the  same 
industry,  and  between  industries  needing  workmen 
of  similar  qualifications. 


MATURITY  135 

Unemployment  insurance,  for  which  a  demand 
has  become  articulate  this  winter,  makes  for  stabil- 
ity of  labor,  and  it  can  probably  best  be  organized, 
as  it  has  been  in  England,  in  connection  with  a 
national  or  state  system  of  employment  bureaus, 
since  through  these  bureaus  there  will  always  be 
reliable  information  as  to  whether  there  is  or  is  not 
employment  to  be  had  and  whether,  therefore,  the 
insured  is  or  is  not  entitled  to  an  out-of-work  bene- 
fit. 

SEASONAL  TRADES 

Among  the  conspicuously  seasonal  industries, 
some  are  necessarily  of  this  character,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  they  can  be  made  more  regular. 
Canning  and  preserving,  for  instance,  to  consider 
only  certain  manufacturing  pursuits,  must  be  done 
when  the  fruits  and  vegetables  are  ripe.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  only  thirteen  per  cent  as  many  per- 
sons were  employed  at  this  work  in  January  as  in 
September,  and  that  most  of  these  thirteen  per 
cent  were  probably  not  identical  with  the  Sep- 
tember employees  in  the  same  industry,  as  they 
were  mainly  occupied  with  fish  and  oysters.  Sugar 
and  molasses  must  be  made  when  the  beets  and 
sugar-cane  are  ready  and  when  the  sap  runs  in  the 
maple  trees.  Logs  must  come  out  of  the  woods 
when  streams  are  open.  Rice  must  be  cleaned  and 
polished  after  the  crop  is  in.  Less  than  half  as 
many  people  are  making  artificial  ice  in  January 
as  in  July.     Bricks  should  not  be  laid  in  freezing 


136  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

weather,  and  building  operations  are  affected, 
though  not  entirely  determined,  by  weather  con- 
ditions. The  building  trades  are  seasonal,  but 
are  subject  to  most  erratic  fluctuations,  depending 
upon  general  prosperity,  housing  laws,  the  money 
market,  real  estate  speculation,  and  the  foresight 
of  builders. 

Other  seasonal  industries  owe  their  irregularity 
to  fashion,  to  the  prevailing  desire,  for  example, 
which  seems  the  one  fixed  principle  of  fashion,  for 
an  entire  change  in  the  style  of  clothing  at  least 
twice  a  year,  and  to  other  habits  and  customs 
against  which  the  economist  and  the  hygienist  may 
rail  and  which  subtle  psychologists  only  can  ade- 
quately expound.  Manufacturers  must  wait  until 
styles  have  been  decided  upon  and  then  they  must 
get  out  their  samples  and  early  stocks  in  time  for 
the  opening  of  the  retail  season.  And  so  only  two- 
fifths  of  the  maximum  force  employed  in  making 
straw  hats  is  needed  in  July,  in  which  seemingly 
untimely  month  the  felt-hat  makers  are  entering 
on  their  busy  season.  Confectionery  is  at  the 
height  of  its  season  in  November;  "statuary  and 
art  goods"  in  September — both  no  doubt  to  be 
forehanded  for  the  Christmas  trade.  The  number 
of  persons  employed  in  providing  some  of  the  per- 
manent and  fundamental  needs  of  human  life — 
such  as  bread,  boots  and  shoes,  hosiery  and  knit 
goods,  coffins,  firearms  and  ammunition,  printing 
and  publishing  and  steel  pens,  silk  goods  and  cotton 


MATURITY  137 

goods — does  not  vary  greatly  from  month  to  month 
in  the  aggregate,  though  even  among  these  indus- 
tries individual  establishments  no  doubt  see  serious 
fluctuations. 

Irregularity  in  those  seasonal  trades  in  which 
the  disturbances  are  due  to  fashion  and  custom 
might,  within  narrow  limits,  be  influenced  by  educa- 
tion; but  it  is  not  a  high  social  ideal  that  would 
adapt  man  to  industry  rather  than  industry  to 
man,  and  so  if  it  satisfies,  as  it  seems  to,  an  ine- 
radicable and  not  very  much  modifiable  want  of 
man  to  wear  the  uncomfortable  stiff  felt  hat  in 
January,  and  the  inadequate  stiff  straw  hat  in 
August,  we  shall  have  to  say,  as  we  say  of  seed-time 
and  harvest,  that  it  is  a  question  of  planning  to 
meet  things  as  they  are. 

Within  narrow  limits  again  something  can  be 
done  by  governments — national,  state,  and  munici- 
pal— to  carry  on  public  construction  of  various 
kinds  at  such  times  and  in  such  ways  as  to  com- 
pensate the  more  extreme  fluctuations  of  ordinary 
trade  conditions.  But  if  very  much  were  at- 
tempted in  this  direction,  an  impossible  burden  of 
expense  would  be  added  to  taxes,  for  governments 
in  industry,  after  all,  are  subject  to  much  the  same 
conditions  of  weather  and  finance  as  private  in- 
vestors. 

The  chief  hope  of  a  better  adjustment  in  essen- 
tially seasonal  trades  lies  in  that  more  flexible 
adaptability  in  the  worker  which  has  already  been 


138  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

urged  on  educational  grounds,  and  which  stands 
him  in  good  stead  in  the  ups  and  downs  of  pros- 
perity in  his  particular  occupation;  and  in  deliber- 
ate preparation  by  individual  workers  in  seasonal 
trades  for  an  alternative  supplementary  trade  whose 
seasons  may  be  expected  to  dovetail.  In  this 
direction  vocational  guides  and  employment  bu- 
reaus can  help. 

RESPONSIBILITY  OF  INDUSTRY 
Industry  itself  should  shoulder  the  responsibility 
for  bringing  order  out  of  the  chaos  of  unemploy- 
ment, irregular  employment,  underemployment, 
and  employment  at  tasks  for  which  the  worker  is 
adapted  neither  by  nature  nor  by  training.  There 
is  altogether  too  much  waste — pecuniary  and  hu- 
man waste — in  the  existing  maladjustments. 
Mayor  Mitchell  recognized  the  reasonableness  of 
this  demand  when  he  made  up  his  committee  on 
unemployment  this  winter  largely  of  the  officers  and 
directors  of  large  industrial,  railway,  and  banking 
corporations,  instead  of  social  workers  and  ladies 
at  large.  Judge  Gary,  of  the  steel  corporation, 
is  its  chairman,  and  other  men  of  large  responsi- 
bilities in  industry  are  associated  with  him.  They 
have  been  expressly  asked  to  consider  not  only 
relief  workshops  and  bundle  days,  loan  funds  and 
relief  funds,  but  also  such  large,  more  permanent, 
and  more  serious  questions  as  the  lessening  of 
seasonal   and   irregular  employment  or  adequate 


MATURITY  139 

preparation  for  it,  unemployment  insurance,  and 
the  distribution  of  labor  under  ordinary  conditions. 
I  do  not  know  how  far  they  will  get  with  these 
larger  aspects  of  their  problem,  but  it  is  something, 
at  least,  that  the  public  is  coming  to  expect  in- 
vestors, directors,  and  officers  of  corporations 
which  employ  the  great  bulk  of  the  industrial  work- 
ers to  give  the  same  close  and  continuous  and  effec- 
tive attention  to  labor  problems  and  their  results 
as  they  have  presumably  given  to  financial  policies 
and  their  results. 

WORKING  CONDITIONS 

Fortunately,  however,  for  all  of  us  as  consumers, 
most  of  us  as  workers  are,  after  all,  at  work  most  of 
the  time,  and  social  construction  concerns  itself 
inevitably  even  more  with  the  conditions  of  work 
than  with  those  of  enforced  idleness. 

Of  child  labor  we  have  already  said  enough.  We 
will  have  none  of  it.  As  to  the  employment  of 
older  girls  and  boys,  we  have  also  said  as  much  as 
is  necessary,  perhaps,  but  builders  of  the  social 
structure  will  have  to  give  this  subject  their  very 
earnest  consideration.  From  fourteen  to  twenty 
work  should  not  crowd  out  education.  The  one 
should  dovetail  into  the  other,  so  that  the  health, 
the  character,  and  the  future  life-long  efficiency  of 
the  young  people  will  have  adequate  safeguards. 
In  a  rational  social  organization  the  work  will  be 
done  by  adults,  not  by  adolescents;   by  the  grown 


140  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

up,  not  by  the  growing  up.  Of  course,  keeping 
children  and  youths  out  of  work  is  not  enough. 
The  main  thing  is  to  prepare  them  for  work  later 
on  and  for  life. 

Women  in  industry  also  need  special  protection 
and  the  kind  of  liberty  that  rests  upon  a  solid  basis 
of  physiology  and  anatomy,  of  racial  security  and 
welfare,  of  consideration  for  the  interests  of  the 
family  and  of  children  yet  unborn,  rather  than  the 
negative  and  dangerous  kind  of  liberty  which  em- 
ployers and  their  lawyers  sometimes  invoke  in 
behalf  of  women — the  unlimited  liberty  of  indi- 
vidual contract.  Laws  limiting  the  total  number 
of  hours  of  women's  work  in  a  day  and  in  a  week, 
restricting  their  employment  at  night  and  in  physi- 
cally injurious  occupations,  represent  a  sober  con- 
sensus of  public  opinion  originating  largely  with 
women ;  created,  sustained,  and  justified  by  women ; 
but  accepted  also  by  competent  medical  au- 
thority, by  lawmakers  and  courts,  mostly  repre- 
sented by  men.  It  is  a  subject  which  does  not  in- 
volve disputed  issues  of  suffrage  or  feminism,  save 
as  some  may  think  that  women  as  voters  might  be 
able  to  push  such  measures  more  vigorously.  The 
principle  has  certainly  been  established  already  that 
it  does  not  contravene  the  constitution  or  the  rights 
of  individuals  to  protect  women  in  their  own  in- 
terests and  in  the  common  interest  from  night  work, 
injurious  work,  and  overwork. 


MATURITY  141 

ACCIDENTS 
Another  problem  still  unsolved,  but  now  receiv- 
ing very  active  consideration,  is  that  of  compensa- 
tion for  deaths  and  injuries  to  workmen  in  the 
course  of  their  occupation.  To  a  far  greater  extent 
than  was  just  or  reasonable  we  have  in  the  past 
thrown  the  cost  and  hardships  of  such  industrial 
injuries  on  the  injured  workmen  and  their  families. 
They  have  had  their  chance  at  a  lawsuit  for  dam- 
ages, but  they  have  had  to  show  that  the  employer 
was  liable — was  responsible  for  the  accident  by  some 
personal  fault  or  negligence  on  his  part.  If  the 
injured  or  killed  workman  was  contributorily  negli- 
gent, or  if  a  fellow  employee  was  negligent,  or  if  it 
was  due  to  an  ordinary  risk  of  the  trade  which  the 
employee  was  supposed  to  know  about,  he  might 
get  nothing  at  all,  even  though  disabled  for  life. 
Such  barbarous  laws  and  practices  survived  here 
long  after  they  were  changed  or  abolished  in  other 
civilized  countries,  but  of  late  there  has  swept  over 
the  country  a  realization  of  their  injustice  and 
iniquity  which  has  led  to  the  gradual  introduction 
of  a  new  principle.  Compensation,  reasonable  in 
amount  but  immediate,  and  assured,  generally,  from 
some  sort  of  insurance  fund,  previously  collected  by 
law,  is  taking  the  place  of  employer's  liability  at 
law.  The  successful  introduction  of  the  compensa- 
tion-insurance  principle  in   place  of  the  liability 

principle,  making  the  financial  burden  of  deaths 
10 


142  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

and  injuries  a  charge  on  the  industry  to  be  dis- 
tributed to  consumers,  instead  of  a  charge  on  the 
families  of  the  workers,  is  a  clear  triumph  of  elemen- 
tary justice  over  artificial  law,  of  the  cooperative 
over  the  exploitive  principle.  It  is  as  an  incident 
of  such  legislation  that  "safety  first"  and  "boost- 
ing for  safety"  campaigns  have  been  inaugurated. 
Factory  inspection  by  the  state  is  all  very  well  and 
is  necessary,  but  constant  self-inspection  by  officers, 
superintendents,  foremen,  and  operatives  is  the 
only  kind  of  inspection  that  will  prevent  accidents. 
If  the  insurance  rate  which  a  given  establishment 
has  to  pay  is  fixed  by  an  association  of  which  that 
establishment  is  a  member,  and  fixed  according  to 
the  actual  risk,  as  determined  by  safety  devices 
and  efficiency  of  management,  the  safety  devices 
will  be  installed  and  the  management  will  tend  to 
become  efficient. 

THE  WORKING  DAY 
Whether  laws  should  directly  prescribe  maximum 
hours  of  labor  for  adult  men  is  an  open  question. 
Probably  the  prevailing  sentiment  is  against  it, 
on  the  ground  that  through  trade  unions  and  vol- 
untary agreements  the  long  day  can  be  shortened 
and  the  short  day  maintained.  There  are  advan- 
tages in  the  voluntary  principle,  as  we  have  seen 
in  other  connections,  when  it  works.  If  it  fails  to 
work, — if  under  the  voluntary  principle  men  are 
continuously  and  outrageously  overworked  so  that 


MATURITY  143 

their  working  life  is  reduced,  their  power  to  main- 
tain a  home  and  family  life  impaired,  their  leisure 
destroyed  or  poisoned  by  fatigue  toxins  until  they 
have  no  capacity  to  use  their  free  time ;  if  standards 
are  fixed  by  a  cheap  boarding-house  contingent  of 
unmarried  immigrants  or  by  any  native  stock  so 
demoralized  and  exploitable  that  self-respecting 
workingmen  who  have  families  to  support  in  de- 
cency and  comfort  cannot  compete  with  them, — 
then  a  fair  case  may  be  made  out  for  a  limitation  of 
the  voluntary  principle  and  the  establishment  of  a 
maximum  working  day  by  law.  This  has  already 
been  done  to  a  large  extent  as  far  as  employment  on 
public  work  is  concerned,  even  to  some  extent  when 
this  is  done  by  private  contract. 

Whether  law  is  needed  to  establish  and  maintain 
a  minimum  standard  as  to  overwork,  or  whether 
this  can  be  left  to  the  operation  of  free  contract 
between  employers  and  employees,  is  a  question  for 
evidence.  In  one  industry  it  may  be  necessary  and 
in  another  not.  However  sincere  our  preference 
for  non-interference,  we  are  coming  to  have  a 
stronger  preference  for  conserving  life  and  health 
and  character,  and  those  managers  of  industrial 
enterprises  who  prefer  to  keep  their  management  in 
their  own  hands  will  do  so  most  easily  by  seeing  to 
it  that  the  hours  are  reasonable  according  to 
present  standards  of  what  reasonable  hours  are. 

Science  has  come  to  the  support  of  human  wel- 
fare once  more  in  this  very  connection  by  a  more 


144  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

thorough  investigation  of  physiological  effects  of 
fatigue.  It  has  been  discovered  that  there  is  a 
fatigue  toxin,  an  actual  poisoning  substance  manu- 
factured in  the  blood  when  there  is  prolonged  mus- 
cular exertion  or  strain  or  severe  nervous  tension. 
We  may  hope  that  science  will  stop  there  and  not 
produce  an  antitoxin,  for  it  is  disturbing  to  think 
what  some  manufacturers  might  be  tempted  to  do 
if  they  had  an  anti-fatigue  toxin  which  could  be 
hypodermically  administered  at  the  end  of  the 
eighth  or  tenth  hour.  If  there  were  nothing  but 
physiology,  that  might  be  all  right.  We  might 
imagine  the  work  being  done  by  half  as  many  work- 
ers, working  all  the  time,  their  fatigue  germs 
slaughtered  as  fast  as  they  appear.  But  there  are 
other  things.  Leisure  is  needed,  not  merely  to 
counteract  fatigue  germs  by  the  germicide  of  rest, 
but  also  to  enable  a  man  to  get  acquainted  with  his 
children  and  to  round  out  his  life.  A  reasonable 
amount  of  fatigue,  quickly  compensated,  is  bene- 
ficial and  not  pathological,  but  industry  is  to  be  so 
organized  in  the  day  of  sound  social  construction  as 
to  keep  all  workers  well  within  the  safety  line. 

SANITARY  CONDITIONS 
Industry  should  be  carried  on  also  under  sani- 
tary conditions.  Light  and  air  and  occasional 
relaxation  from  severe  strain,  such  as  speeding  pro- 
cesses impose,  are  as  elementary  as  freedom  from 
unnecessary  accidents  or  a  too  prolonged  working 


MATURITY  145 

day.  Sanitary  conveniences  should  be  supplied 
voluntarily  by  owners  and  managers,  compulsorily 
if  necessary.  Running  water  for  drinking  and 
washing,  soap  and  clean  towels,  a  sufficient  number 
of  clean  and  decently  protected  closets,  such  ar- 
rangement of  benches,  when  workers  sit  at  their 
work,  or  of  places  to  stand,  when  they  stand,  as  will 
prevent  breathing  or  coughing  into  the  faces  of  one 
another,  are  coming  to  be  among  the  essentials  of 
the  standard  of  factory  conditions. 

There  are  certain  occupations,  such  as  those  in- 
volving the  use  of  lead  and  of  phosphorus,  and  those 
which  are  carried  on  under  atmospheric  pressure, 
in  which  there  is  an  extraordinarily  high  risk  of 
poisoning  or  other  physical  injury.  The  utmost 
protection  against  exposure  to  such  risks,  and  rea- 
sonable compensation  for  such  injuries  and  infec- 
tions as  cannot  be  or  are  not  prevented,  is  in  line 
with  the  spirit  of  compensation  laws  and  safety 
campaigns. 

HOME  MANUFACTURE 
Industry  is  good,  and  family  life  in  the  home  is 
good,  but  under  modern  urban  conditions  they  do 
not  belong  together.  In  the  old  days,  before  the 
industrial  revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in- 
dustry was  ordinarily  carried  on  in  the  home. 
There  were  no  factories  or  factory  towns.  There 
were  no  mill  hands  or  mill  bosses.  There  was  no 
steam  or  electric  power.     There  were  no  railways 


146  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

or  steamboats,  now  an  integral  part  of  our  indus- 
trial system.  For  this  change  we  need  not  go  back 
to  some  remote  age  about  which  we  know  only 
through  legend  and  inference,  but  no  further  than 
to  the  time  of  Franklin  and  Washington,  or  even 
later.  There  are  those  still  alive  who  belonged  for 
a  time  to  that  smokeless,  noiseless  era  when  indus- 
tries were  mainly  carried  on  within  the  domestic 
circle,  although  for  its  completeness  we  must  travel 
farther  back,  to  the  time  when  all  had  a  fixed  status 
and  freedom  of  contract  had  no  meaning,  or  a  very 
different  meaning  from  that  which  modern  English 
and  American  law  has  given  it.  Those  times  are 
long  since  gone;  but  we  have  not  yet  adjusted  our 
laws,  practices,  and  ideas  to  the  conditions  resulting 
from  the  industrial  revolution — or  the  successive 
industrial  revolutions,  for  there  have  been  many, 
so  many  that  perhaps  we  shall  some  day  in  a  better 
perspective  see  that  they  are  stages  in  a  gradual 
evolution. 

The  broad  fact  is  that  the  modern  home  is  no 
place  for  manufacture.  When  materials  are  given 
out  to  be  made  up,  for  example,  in  New  York 
tenements,  the  result  is  that  the  family  is  virtually 
deprived  of  the  meager  space  for  which  a  relatively 
high  rent  has  been  paid  as  a  home.  The  manu- 
facturer may  save  rent  by  this  species  of  very  dis- 
tinct exploitation,  and  that  may  cheapen  the  goods 
to  the  consumer,  though  again  it  may  not.  What 
is  especially  objectionable  about  it  is  that  the  in- 


MATURITY  147 

dustry  virtually  escapes  that  frequent  and  rigid 
inspection  on  which  the  health,  safety,  and  comfort 
of  workers  depend.  The  enforcement  of  child 
labor  laws,  of  restriction  on  the  hours  of  employ- 
ment, of  sanitary  regulations,  are  practicable  in 
factories,  but  in  tenements  or  other  dwellings  any 
such  inspection  and  enforcement  are  so  difficult  and 
expensive  as  to  be  impracticable.  If,  therefore, 
we  are  to  have  standards  at  all  for  the  protection  of 
workers,  it  is  virtually  necessary  to  establish  the 
principle,  which  at  first  seems  rather  repugnant  to 
us,  as  an  invasion  of  private  affairs,  that  manufac- 
turing— such  industries  as  cigar-making,  garment- 
making,  candy-making,  and  nut-picking — shall  not 
be  carried  on  in  private  dwellings,  or  at  least  in 
rooms  ordinarily  used  as  bedrooms,  kitchens,  or  for 
other  domestic  purposes. 

MINIMUM  WAGE 
Society  has  gone  so  far  in  regulating  working 
conditions  as  to  take  an  official  and  controlling  in- 
terest in  fixing  the  age  at  which  the  youth  may  be- 
gin work,  the  hours  during  which  women  may 
work,  the  light  and  air  and  sanitary  conditions  to 
which  workers  are  entitled  while  at  work,  the  pro- 
tection against  accidents  from  machinery  or  other 
foreseeable  causes,  and  compensation  for  such  acci- 
dents as  do  occur.  It  is  a  question  of  fixing  certain 
minimum  standards  corresponding  to  the  accepted 


148  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

ideals  of  the  community  as  to  what  is  right  and 
decent  and  reasonable  in  these  respects. 

The  mind  of  man,  of  socially  minded  man,  when 
it  begins  working  on  problems  of  this  kind,  presses 
steadily  forward  from  one  point  to  another  until  at 
last  it  reaches  the  central  kernel  of  the  matter. 
That  central  kernel  in  industry  is  not  hours,  or 
danger  from  accidents,  or  sanitary  conditions,  but 
the  daily  or  weekly  wage.  Shall  we  then  attempt 
to  fix  wages,  as  well  as  hours  and  safety  and  sani- 
tary conditions?  The  subject  has  recently  been  in- 
vestigated by  several  state  commissions,  and  is 
now  under  consideration  by  others.  Australia 
began  fixing  wages  in  sweated  industries  nearly 
twenty  years  ago,  and  England  has  recently  fol- 
lowed suit,  taking  up  one  industry  after  another — 
chain-making,  paper-box  making,  lace-making, 
tailoring,  mining,  and  others.  The  ordinary  pro- 
cedure is  to  create  wage  boards  on  which  employers 
and  employees  are  represented,  to  inquire  into  the 
wages  actually  paid  and  their  adequacy  to  sustain 
life  and  a  reasonable  standard  of  health,  comfort, 
and  welfare.  In  England  and  in  Australia  these 
findings,  when  approved  by  competent  authority, 
are  binding  in  the  industry  and  in  the  district  cov- 
ered by  the  inquiry. 

Oregon  has  enacted  a  similar  law,  and  its  con- 
stitutionality is  now  being  tested.  Massachusetts 
has  proceeded  more  cautiously  by  providing  for  an 
investigation  of  alleged  sweated  industries  and  the 


MATURITY  149 

publication  of  the  findings  of  the  commission,  not 
making  it,  however,  legally  binding  on  any  particu- 
lar employer.  The  idea  is  that  when  the  facts  are 
fully  known  and  officially  attested,  public  opinion 
will  compel  the  payment  of  a  voluntary  minimum 
wage  sufficient  to  provide  for  a  reasonable  standard 
of  living  among  the  wage-earners  concerned. 

The  chief  arguments  against  minimum  wage 
legislation  are:  (i)  That  it  is  better  to  leave  the 
issue  of  wages  to  voluntary  bargaining,  trusting  to 
trade  unions  to  protect  the  interests  of  workers,  lest 
the  minimum  wage  tend  to  become  the  average  or 
standard  or  even  the  maximum  wage ;  and  (2)  that 
to  forbid  employers  to  pay  less  than  a  certain 
amount — say  nine  dollars  a  week — is  to  throw 
out  of  employment  altogether  those  whose  services 
are  not  worth  that  amount.  Neither  of  these  argu- 
ments need  detain  us  long  here,  interested  as  we 
are  in  fostering  the  normal  life.  Those  whose  ser- 
vices are  worth  less  than  the  low  minimum  likely 
to  be  fixed  by  any  such  law  should  be  out  of  em- 
ployment, either  receiving  a  training  which  will 
make  them  worth  more,  or,  if  unteachable  and  sub- 
normal, then  cared  for  on  some  plan  which  will  keep 
them  properly  occupied  under  direction  in  a  hospital 
or  colony  appropriate  to  their  particular  need. 
I  think  the  responsibility  for  supporting  subnormal 
persons  who  cannot  earn  a  low  minimum  wage 
should  be  definitely  assumed,  if  necessary,  by  the 
state,  until  they  can  be  graduated  into  self-support. 


150  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

The  operation  of  minimum  wage  laws  elsewhere 
does  not  justify  the  apprehension  that  the  mini- 
mum wage  tends  to  become  the  standard.  Some- 
times such  a  tendency  is  apparent,  but  usually  the 
influences  determining  the  wage  contract  operate 
freely  above  the  plane  fixed  by  the  law. 

INDUSTRIAL  RELATIONS 

All  these  matters  affecting  wages  and  the  con- 
ditions of  industry,  and  many  others  which  we 
cannot  discuss,  involve  what  are  known  as  indus- 
trial relations,  i.e.  the  relations  between  employer 
and  wage-earner.  Those  relations  are  sometimes 
disturbed  by  strikes  or  lock-outs,  and  they  are 
rendered  acute  by  boycotts  and  blacklists.  Our 
governmental  and  voluntary  machinery  for  settling 
disputes  has  long  been  felt  by  thoughtful  students 
of  industry  to  be  defective.  Force,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  violence,  on  the  other,  have  revealed  its  weak- 
nesses. Some  dissatisfied  workmen  use  dynamite, 
and  society  properly  visits  upon  them  its  severe 
condemnation.  Other  dissatisfied  workmen — 
justly  dissatisfied  workmen — refuse  to  use  violence, 
and  have  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  any  hear- 
ing whatever  or  any  redress  for  their  grievances. 

Realizing  these  things,  realizing  them  very  keenly 
at  the  time  of  the  Los  Angeles  dynamiting  confes- 
sions a  few  years  ago,  a  group  of  social  workers  and 
economists  secured,  by  act  of  Congress,  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  Federal  Commission  to  investigate 


MATURITY  151 

industrial  relations,  industrial  unrest,  and  to  devise 
means  for  maintaining  industrial  peace  on  a  just  and 
equitable  basis.  That  Commission  is  still  in  exist- 
ence, and  it  would  be  premature  to  offer  any  com- 
ments on  its  work.  Whoever  solves  the  problems 
entrusted  to  it  by  the  government  of  the  United 
States  will  make  a  most  important  contribution  to 
the  normal  life  of  man  in  America. 


V 

MATURITY: 

HOME 


THE  HOME 

Having  discussed  some  of  the  social  problems  of 
adult  life  centering  in  industry,  involved  in  the 
activities  of  men  and  women  in  earning  their  living, 
we  have  next  to  ask  what  conditions  are  needed  to 
assure  a  normal  home  life  and  what  circumstances — 
especially  what  modifiable  circumstances — are  in- 
terfering with  its  full  realization. 

We  may  notice,  by  way  of  preface,  that  marriage 
is  popular  in  America,  as  well  as  work.  Even 
among  the  young  people  twenty  to  twenty-five 
years  of  age  about  half  the  women  of  the  nation 
are  married  and  about  one-fourth  of  the  men. 
By  the  time  they  get  into  the  thirty-five  to  forty-five 
year  age-group  only  seventeen  per  cent  of  the  men 
are  still  single  and  only  eleven  per  cent  of  the 
women;  and  at  sixty-five  and  over  the  men  have 
caught  up  with  the  women,  and  there  remain  only 
six  per  cent  of  each  who  have  never  married.  The 
proportion  of  single  persons  is  lower  in  the  United 
States  than  in  most  foreign  countries.  Further- 
more, the  census  figures  seem  to  show,  contrary  to 
the  prevailing  impression,  that  in  all  classes  of  our 
population  (i.e.  census  classes,  according  to  color 
and  nativity)  a  larger  proportion  of  the  younger 

155 


156  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

people  are  marrying  now  than  was  the  case  twenty 
years  ago,  and  that  this  increase  is  sufficient  to 
affect  the  proportion  in  the  total  adult  population. 
Thus,  if  the  marriage  rate  may  be  taken  as  an  index, 
the  tendency  in  the  United  States  seems  to  be  in- 
creasingly in  favor  of  establishing  homes. 

In  other  words,  notwithstanding  the  growth  of 
cities  and  the  rise  in  the  standard  of  living  which 
operates  to  delay  marriage,  notwithstanding  the 
immigration  of  unmarried  men  and  women,  not- 
withstanding all  the  influences  which  are  supposed 
to  be  undermining  domesticity  and  dissolving  home 
life,  the  proportion  of  the  adult  population  who  de- 
scribe themselves  as  married  has  actually  increased 
in  twenty  years,  and,  as  the  census  bureau  sagely 
remarks  "very  few  persons  are  ignorant  of  their  own 
marital  condition." 

STANDARD  OF  LIFE 
What  kind  of  homes  they  shall  be — whether 
normal  or  abnormal — depends  largely  upon  our 
standard  of  living:  that  spiritual  atmosphere,  that 
indefinable  force,  compounded  of  income  and  what 
we  buy  with  it,  ideals  and  tastes  and  the  environ- 
ment provided  by  our  fellows,  which  is  something 
more  than  the  sum  of  its  parts,  something  different 
from  any  of  them,  a  power  to  which  unconsciously 
we  defer  in  every  choice  we  make,  and  which  we 
frequently  invoke  to  sustain  arguments  or  justify 
general  policies. 


MATURITY  157 

When  this  standard  becomes  consciously  ideal- 
ized, when  it  has  become  ingrained  in  the  habits 
and  instincts  of  a  group  of  people,  when  it  extends 
to  activities  as  well  as  to  pleasures,  when  it  oper- 
ates to  fix  the  age  of  marriage,  the  hours  of  the 
working  day,  the  issues  of  war  and  peace,  of  life 
and  death,  of  the  here  and  the  hereafter,  we  may 
justly  call  it  the  standard  of  life. 

The  greatest  national  asset  of  any  civilized,  en- 
lightened, prosperous,  and  progressive  people  is  the 
standard  of  life  of  its  adult  population.  Undigged 
minerals  and  soils  and  water  power  and  harbors, 
accumulated  capital  in  manufacturing  plants  and 
road-beds  and  rolling  stock,  native  shrewdness  in 
bargaining,  native  energy  in  labor,  acquired  knowl- 
edge of  the  arts  of  industry,  are  all  of  less  signifi- 
cance, less  fundamental  importance,  than  that  com- 
plex, subtle,  intangible  reality — the  standard  of 
life  of  the  working  people. 

Trade  unions  exist  mainly  to  protect  the  stand- 
ard of  life.  When  laborers  in  some  great  conflict 
seek  to  show  that  their  cause  is  just  because  the  low 
wages  against  which  they  protest  are  not  sufficient 
to  maintain  their  standard  of  life,  they  make,  if 
they  are  sincere,  the  one  irresistible  appeal  to  which 
every  patriot  must  pay  heed,  the  appeal  by  which, 
if  their  evidence  is  sufficient,  they  will  best  be  justi- 
fied in  the  long-range  view  of  human  welfare.  If 
war  or  industrial  depression  or  irregular  employ- 
ment or  famine  or  pestilent  epidemic  or  demoraliz- 
11 


158  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

ing  poor  relief  or  the  luxurious  indulgence  of  vice 
breaks  down  the  standard  of  life,  this  is  for  civiliza- 
tion its  one  real  disaster,  retrievable,  it  may  be,  by 
long  and  painful  effort,  but  very  probably  not  in 
the  same  nation  or  community.  Such  a  disaster  is 
not  easily  retrieved.  Earthquake  or  flood  or  fire 
or  defeat  in  arms  may  be  but  a  slight  disaster  in  the 
larger  perspective  of  history,  but  any  force  which 
reaches  the  inner  standards  of  the  people,  their 
ideas  as  to  what  manner  of  life  they  should  lead,  has 
a  cumulative  and  incalculable  effect  on  all  their 
future  welfare. 

This  standard  of  life,  however,  fortunately  is  not 
determined  mainly  by  wars  or  famines  or  any  other 
external  accidents.  It  is  the  direct  product  of  that 
good  inheritance,  that  healthy  infancy,  that  pro- 
tected and  sufficiently  prolonged  childhood,  con- 
secrated to  education  in  its  broadest  sense,  that 
youth  spent  in  the  upbuilding  of  sound  character, 
that  rational  organization  of  the  occupations  into 
which  the  young  enter  at  the  threshold  of  matur- 
ity, that  attention  to  the  conditions  under  which  the 
wealth  of  the  world  is  produced  and  distributed, 
which  have  occupied  our  attention  as  we  have 
dwelt  upon  the  successive  stages  in  a  normal  life. 

Tainted,  corrupt,  diseased  stock  should  be  elim- 
inated if  by  any  means  it  can  be  done:  if  for  no 
other  reason,  because  it  lowers  the  standard  of  life 
of  all  whom  it  touches  in  the  family  either  to  cor- 


MATURITY  159 

rupt  or  to  burden.  Sickly  babies  should  be  made 
strong,  bottle-fed  babies  nursed  at  the  breast, 
that  the  physical  basis  for  a  high  standard  of  life 
may  be  laid  secure.  Children  should  be  informed 
and  disciplined,  made  strong  and  fit  for  life  in  ways 
thought  through  deliberately  with  the  end  in  view 
of  maintaining  the  highest  standards  to  which  men 
have  risen,  and  creating  the  conditions  which  will 
lead  to  the  spontaneous,  inevitable  realization  of 
higher  standards  still.  These  things  are  implied 
in  all  those  policies  of  social  selection,  protection, 
nurture,  and  adaptation  which  the  interests  of  the 
unfolding  normal  life  of  man  require. 

Now,  however,  we  may  think  of  the  standard  of 
life  as  exhibited  in  the  normal  family  household,  in 
the  home  where  man  and  wife,  parent  and  child, 
brother  and  sister,  in  mutual  interdependence  live 
the  life  which  the  passing  generations  have  made 
possible  for  them. 

WISE  USE  OF  INCOME 

The  first  essential  to  a  normal  standard  of  living 
is  an  adequate  and  regular  income,  earned  prefer- 
ably by  the  male  head  of  the  family,  without  as- 
sistance from  his  wife  ordinarily,  never  with  the 
aid  of  children;  earned  without  exhausting  the 
worker's  strength  prematurely  or  exposing  him  to 
unnecessary   dangers   from   accident   and   disease. 

The  second  essential  is  that  this  adequate  income 


160  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

shall  be  adequately  used,  and  for  this  the  house- 
wife has  normally  the  main  responsibility.  To 
woman,  by  an  evolutionary  process,  has  fallen  the 
task  of  directing  how  the  wealth  brought  into  the 
house  shall  be  used,  whether  much  or  little  shall  be 
made  of  it,  what  values  shall  be  added  to  it.  The 
woman  at  the  head  of  a  household  is  as  truly  an 
entrepreneur,  if  we  may  drop  into  the  terminology 
of  economics,  as  her  husband  at  the  head  of  a  fac- 
tory; she  is  as  truly  a  producer  of  wealth  when  she 
broils  a  chop  or  washes  the  dishes,  thereby  increas- 
ing the  utility  of  those  commodities,  as  is  her  son 
when  he  helps  build  a  bridge  or  repairs  a  drain-pipe 
or  blacks  some  one's  boots.  Of  still  greater  im- 
portance is  the  contribution  she  can  make  by  de- 
termining a  wiser  consumption  of  wealth,  not  only 
by  choosing  more  intelligently  each  separate  article 
of  food  and  clothing  and  furniture,  but  also  by 
bringing  about  such  a  relation  among  all  the  dif- 
ferent material  elements  of  the  home  that  the  result 
is  a  harmonious  unit  instead  of  a  haphazard  assem- 
blage of  necessities  of  life.  The  person  who  ar- 
ranges and  groups  commodities  in  such  a  way  that 
their  combined  utility  is  greater  than  the  sum  of 
their  separate  utilities  performs  an  economic  ser- 
vice which  is  of  equal  importance,  at  least,  with  that 
performed  by  the  one  whom  we  call  technically  a 
producer.  Browning  seems  to  think  that  it  is  only 
in  music  that  this  principle  applies.  The  rapt  com- 
poser, thrilled  by  his  own  conceptions,  his  ability 


MATURITY  161 

to  make  something  wonderful  out  of  sounds  mean- 
ingless in  themselves,  taken  separately,  cries: 

And  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed  to 

man, 
That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame,  not  a  fourth  sound, 

but  a  star. 

Every  housewife  does  things  quite  as  wonderful. 
Improvements  in  consumption  which  bring  about 
greater  harmony  of  combinations,  and  conse- 
quently actually  create  a  sort  of  surplus  value,  hold 
the  greatest  immediate  possibilities  for  advancing 
the  general  prosperity.  In  other  words,  and  to  be 
concrete,  household  management  deserves  and  will 
repay,  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  national 
welfare,  the  application  of  the  best  brains  and  the 
best-educated  brains  of  the  land. 


CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  SOCIETY 
Under  normal  conditions,  however,  the  wisest 
housewife,  with  an  adequate  income,  is  apt  to  be 
thwarted  in  her  attempts  to  provide  intelligently 
for  her  household  unless  society  does  some  intelli- 
gent planning  on  its  own  account.  Even  in  the 
daily  marketing  there  is  scope  for  social  coopera- 
tion, now  that  our  market-gardens  extend  from 
Key  West  to  Halifax,  and  our  poultry  yards  reach 
beyond  the  Mississippi.  The  cheapening  of  sugar, 
the  development  of  cold  storage  transportation, 
and  the  invention  of  the  art  of  canning  fruit  and 
vegetables  have  transformed  our  diet,  but  safely  so 


162  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

only  if  the  government  inspects  the  canned  goods, 
debars  authoritatively  poisonous  preservatives,  and 
makes  the  labels  tell  the  truth. 

Take  the  fundamental  matter  of  choosing  a  home, 
the  physical  dwelling-place  of  the  family.  For  the 
great  majority  of  families  choice  is  restricted  to 
houses  that  have  already  been  built  by  some  one 
else.  Where  they  have  been  built  and  what  kind 
of  houses  they  are  has  been  determined  not  with 
reference  to  the  needs  of  the  people  for  homes,  as 
such,  but  by  the  real  estate  system,  the  tax  system, 
the  transportation  system,  and  other  things  resting 
upon  laws  and  the  administration  of  laws,  all  of 
which  have  ordinarily  had  in  view  business  in- 
terests, civic  interests,  perhaps,  in  a  narrow  and 
short-sighted  sense,  but  not  the  welfare  of  the  aver- 
age family.  The  way  in  which  the  streets  of  the 
city  were  originally  laid  out  has  its  influence,  and 
mistakes  need  not  be  repeated  in  newer  parts  of  the 
city  or  in  new  cities.  The  transportation  system 
is  generally  a  "system"  by  courtesy  only,  being 
made  up  of  a  number  of  unrelated  ventures,  under- 
taken for  private  gain,  and  of  most  unequal  and 
frequently  uncertain  social  value.  Factories  have 
been  located  primarily  with  a  view  to  the  immediate 
interests  of  the  business,  not  for  the  effect  they 
might  have  in  bringing  about  a  healthy  and  de- 
sirable development  which  would  bring  permanent 
advantages  to  the  individual  manufacturer  as  well 
as  to  the  rest  of  the  community.     When  we  have 


MATURITY  163 

concerned  ourselves  with  town  planning  and  the 
transportation  problem  at  all,  it  has  been  rather  for 
their  relation  to  business,  commerce,  industry,  and 
civic  centers,  than  for  their  bearing  upon  the  charac- 
ter and  location  of  the  homes  of  the  people. 

In  a  sound  program  of  social  construction  the 
streets  and  parks  and  car-lines  will  all  be  looked 
upon  as  elements  in  the  problem  of  domestic  house- 
keeping. Transportation  facilities  will  be  devel- 
oped, actively  and  consciously,  into  an  adequate 
system,  making  it  possible  to  get  quickly  and  com- 
fortably from  home  to  work  and  back  home  again, 
and  opening  a  variety  of  different  residence  dis- 
tricts to  persons  employed  in  the  same  establish- 
ment. Factories  will  be  located  in  accordance 
with  a  consistent  plan,  based  upon  consideration 
of  social  welfare  and  worked  out  with  scientific 
wisdom  and  prophetic  insight.  The  city  will  be 
divided  on  what  is  called  the  zone  system,  not 
necessarily  into  concentric  zones,  but  into  districts 
suitable  for  its  geographical  contour  and  social 
needs,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  diversity  in  the 
character  of  buildings  in  the  different  zones,  dis- 
couraging speculation  in  land,  and  preventing  the 
duplication  in  outlying  portions  of  bad  conditions 
already  established  in  the  center.  Specific  legis- 
lation will  insure,  furthermore,  that  all  buildings 
intended  for  homes — all  congregate  dwellings,  at 
any  rate — shall  have  certain  minimum  require- 
ments which  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  essential. 


164  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

The  primary  function  of  the  home  is  to  give  pro- 
tection, privacy,  and  security.  The  modern  city 
home  gives  excellent  protection  from  rain  and  snow 
and  lightning,  and  relative  security  from  robbers. 
In  the  tenement  flats  of  the  large  cities,  however,  its 
minute  dimensions  make  privacy  within  its  walls 
almost  impossible,  and  it  affords  but  scanty  pro- 
tection against  the  vice  and  contamination  that 
may  be  housed  on  the  next  landing  or  next  door  in 
the  alley.  It  exposes  its  occupants  to  worse  ene- 
mies than  the  weather,  in  the  unseen  germs  which 
it  shelters,  until  it  actually  seems,  as  an  inspector 
of  the  New  York  Board  of  Health  reflected  in  1842, 
and  as  health  conditions  in  the  refugee  camps  in 
San  Francisco  suggested  in  1906,  that  it  might  be 
preferable  to  be  "absolutely  houseless."  It  is  a 
fact  that  after  the  destruction  of  the  homes  of  San 
Francisco  by  the  great  fire  and  earthquake  the 
death-rate  and  the  morbidity  rate  were  astonish- 
ingly reduced. 

Because  of  the  seriousness  of  the  evils  which  de- 
veloped under  the  laissez-faire  system  of  providing 
houses,  and  because  the  individual  can  to  so  lim- 
ited an  extent  influence  the  kind  of  house  that  he 
is  to  live  in,  since  a  house  once  built  will  almost 
certainly  be  occupied  by  some  one,  the  principle 
may  be  said  to  be  established  that  it  is  a  duty  of 
society  to  make  it  impossible  for  any  of  its  members 
to  live  in  houses  below  a  minimum  standard  pre- 
scribed by  law.     In  many  places  now  the  laws  en- 


MATURITY  165 

sure  that  all  tenements  which  are  built  shall  be 
model  tenements,  i.  e.  shall  be  practically  as  good 
in  the  essential  features  of  light,  ventilation,  sani- 
tary conveniences,  security  from  fire  and  other 
similar  dangers,  as  the  dwellings  erected  but  a  few 
years  ago,  partly  from  philanthropic  motives,  and 
called  "model."  On  no  other  subject  perhaps  have 
we  gone  so  far  in  putting  into  the  form  of  laws  or 
ordinances  our  social  standard  as  we  have  in  some 
cities  on  the  subject  of  housing;  and  this  is  well, 
for  the  character  of  our  domestic  life  is  enormously 
influenced  by  the  character  of  the  houses  in  which 
we  live.  Think,  for  example,  of  the  tremendous 
social  and  economic  effects  of  such  minor  features 
as  a  garden,  an  attic,  a  cellar  (with  a  cellar-door  for 
a  slide)  and  pantries,  fences  and  a  gate  to  swing  on 
and  a  post  to  sit  on,  and  roofs  and  verandas,  to  say 
nothing  of  more  serious  matters,  like  the  size  and 
number  and  arrangement  of  rooms,  ventilation  and 
water-supply,  and  fire-escapes. 

POSITIVE  INFLUENCES  ON  HOME  LIFE 
Before  our  discussion  runs,  as  it  inevitably  must, 
into  the  destructive  influences  menacing  normal 
home  life,  it  is  expedient  to  emphasize  once  more 
the  positive  resources  for  creating  an  affirmative 
home  life,  that  we  may  not  draw  the  mistaken  in- 
ference from  these  discussions,  that  painstaking 
defensive  measures  against  the  dangers  represent 
the  best  social  tactics. 


166  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

There  is  no  sociological  recipe,  so  far  as  I  know, 
for  family  affection:  for  that  continuing  and  ever 
strengthening  love  of  man  for  wife  and  of  woman 
for  husband,  without  which  there  is  no  family  in 
the  true  sense;  for  that,  if  need  be  sacrificing,  but 
in  any  event  always  uncalculating,  love  of  parent 
for  offspring,  and  that  reciprocal  attachment  of 
child  for  parent  which,  beginning  in  physical  de- 
pendence, may  ripen  into  a  conscious  loyalty  match- 
ing mother  love  itself;  for  all  those  natural  ties, 
as  we  rightly  call  them,  of  brother  and  sister  and 
other  relations,  extending  into  collateral  lines  in- 
definitely according  to  circumstances,  sometimes 
farther  than  consorts  with  the  immediate  economic 
welfare  of  the  individual,  so  that  a  young  man  or 
even  a  young  woman  may  at  times  obey  a  sound 
instinct  when  he  goes  into  a  far  country  for  the 
express  purpose  of  getting  away  from  his  family 
and  escaping  from  their  traditions. 

Common  religious  interests  are  among  the 
strongest  influences  to  support,  develop,  and  main- 
tain these  natural  domestic  relations.  The  family 
altar  is  not  so  often  outwardly  visible  in  the  mod- 
ern home, — partly  perhaps  because  rents  are  high, 
— but  unless  there  is  set  up  in  the  hearts  of  children 
a  reverence  for  things  really  held  sacred  by  the 
parents,  one  of  the  most  ancient  and  the  most  es- 
sential of  intangible  family  bonds  is  broken. 

Economic  equality  within  the  family,  amount- 
ing to  the  communistic  formula,  "From  each  ac- 


MATURITY  167 

cording  to  his  powers,  to  each  according  to  his 
needs,"  is  another  foundation  stone  of  family  soli- 
darity. We  accept  that  principle  within  the 
family  as  axiomatic.  All  the  income  is,  of  course, 
for  the  benefit — the  wisely  and  justly  apportioned 
benefit — of  the  whole  family.  If  differences  in 
education  are  made  among  the  children,  it  is  be- 
cause of  some  real  or  assumed  differences  in  their 
aptitudes,  or  because  of  changed  conditions. 
Girls  and  boys  share  equally;  eldest  sons  have  no 
rights  of  primogeniture;  youngest  sons  no  exclus- 
ive claim  to  affection.  The  welfare  of  each,  broad- 
based  in  the  welfare  of  all,  is  our  ideal,  and  even  the 
persistent  attempt  at  a  practical  realization  of  that 
ideal  becomes  a  bond  of  union  among  the  members 
of  the  family.  No  doubt  that  ideal  fails  in  practice 
often  from  miscalculation. 

Such  failure  will  be  less  frequent  when  the  prac- 
tice of  budgetary  standards  becomes  common, 
displacing  the  haphazard  spending  of  whatever  is  in 
sight  without  regard  to  future  or  even  present 
competing  needs.  As  incomes  increase,  families 
have  it  in  their  power  to  pass  over  from  forced 
standards  to  deliberately  planned  budgetary  stand- 
ards. On  the  lower  plane  they  pay  for  rent,  food, 
and  clothing,  more  or  less  what  they  must.  There 
is  no  margin  for  long-range  planning,  for  saving  and 
investment,  as  in  building  and  loan  societies  or 
life  insurance,  except  for  burial  expenses.  On  a 
higher  plane  of  income  many  families  continue  just 


168  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

the  same  method  of  expenditure,  not  having  ad- 
justed their  psychology  to  their  earning  power. 
Any  American  skilled  workman  or  office  man,  with 
an  income  of  nine  hundred  dollars  a  year  or  more, 
can  ordinarily  plan  his  budget  on  a  monthly  or 
annual  basis,  or  his  wife  can  do  it  for  him  if  she  has 
the  chance,  as,  of  course,  she  should;  and  such 
careful  planning  of  expenditure,  such  matching  up 
of  expenditure  to  income,  taking  account  of  com- 
mon family  needs,  and  also  of  the  changing  individ- 
ual needs  of  its  individual  members,  will  become  a 
bond  of  union  and  strength  in  the  family  household. 
Common  interest  in  the  physical  and  mental 
development  of  children,  from  the  day  of  birth, 
through  infancy,  kindergarten,  school,  apprentice- 
ship, college,  professional  school,  wherever  the 
destiny  of  the  individual  guided  by  parental  care 
and  encouragement  and  all  other  complex  influences 
may  lead  him,  is  another  such  factor  of  family 
union.  What  subject  is  so  engrossing  in  the 
family  circle,  what  elastic  and  invisible  bond  so 
secure  as  the  sharing  of  anxieties,  the  triumphs  of 
such  an  interest  as  that  of  the  education  of  the 
growing  members  of  a  family?  Common  house- 
hold possessions,  family  parties  at  the  theatre  or 
elsewhere  outside  the  home,  or  within  its  circle,  and 
all  the  multitude  of  miscellaneous  socializing  ex- 
periences,— each  makes  its  special  contribution 
towards  that  unique  and  indissoluble  whole,  the 
home  life  of  the  family. 


MATURITY  169 

Pride  in  family  traditions  may  be  good  or  bad. 
Often  it  is  neither,  but  a  rather  harmless,  some- 
times amusing,  artificially  maintained  satisfaction 
in  doing  things  a  little  differently,  in  saying  things 
a  trifle  otherwise,  keeping  up  a  distinction  between 
the  family  and  the  neighbors,  not  so  much  because 
it  is  of  any  advantage  to  the  family  as  because  it 
may  bother  the  neighbors. 

INTEMPERANCE 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  pathological  aspects  of 
adult  life  in  the  home. 

Among  the  vicious  habits  which  impair  or  destroy 
normal  family  life  none  other  compares  in  devasta- 
tion with  the  appetite  for  strong  drink. 

Alcoholism  is  no  doubt  sometimes  an  inherited 
taint,  the  outcropping  of  a  degenerate  germ  plasm, 
certain  to  take  some  form  of  mental  or  nervous  in- 
stability— if  not  inebriety,  then  some  other  less  or 
more  harmful.  Sometimes  it  is  no  doubt  a  disease, 
even  if  not  inherited,  akin  to  insanity.  Sometimes, 
no  doubt,  it  is  a  mere  weakness  of  the  will,  an  in- 
dulgence in  pleasure,  like  overeating,  or  extrava- 
gance of  any  other  harmful  kind. 

Primarily,  however,  when  considered  in  its  effect 
on  individual  and  family  welfare,  alcoholism  is  to 
be  looked  upon  as  a  habit,  easily  formed  under 
favoring  conditions,  easily  prevented  at  the  outset 
under  favoring  conditions,  beginning  often,  not 
always,  in  youth  or  early  manhood,  increasing  by 


170  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

easy  stages,  undermining  gradually  economic 
efficiency,  the  sense  of  family  responsibility,  per- 
sonal and  social  standards,  creating  fleeting  de- 
lusions of  power  and  resourcefulness  for  which  there 
is  no  substantial  basis,  and  leading  on,  just  as  tem- 
perance reformers  have  always  said,  straight  to 
destruction,  physical,  economic,  social,  and  moral. 

Bad  associations  and  good  advertising  lead  most 
often  to  the  drink  habit.  The  light  and  warmth  of 
the  saloon,  its  convivial  sociability,  its  wide-open 
hospitality,  its  omnipresence  where  it  is  present  at 
all,  its  business-like  efficiency  for  its  own  ends,  its 
brilliant  advertising  signs,  its  substantial  backing 
by  distilleries  and  breweries,  by  journalism  and 
politics,  and  the  feebleness  of  its  competitors  in  the 
kind  of  social  service  which  it  renders,  are  surely 
enough  to  account  for  the  steady  supply  of  victims 
in  the  early  stages  of  this  pernicious  habit.  The 
elimination  of  the  saloon  does  not  eliminate  the 
inheritance  of  degenerate  racial  stock  or  strengthen 
weak  wills  or  insure  temperance  as  a  positive  virtue. 
But  it  does  prevent  or  diminish  the  temptation  to 
form  the  alcoholic  habit.  It  does  increase  the 
chances  of  normal  development,  through  adoles- 
cence and  early  maturity,  of  those  who  have  begun 
life  fairly  and  come  through  childhood  safely. 

An  entirely  dry  community,  i.  e.  one  from  which 
alcoholic  beverages  strong  or  mild  are  deliberately 
barred,  is  a  new  experiment  in  the  world.  In  mod- 
ern times  the  experiment  is  very  modern  indeed  and 


MATURITY  171 

hardly  yet  tried  on  any  such  scale,  or  for  any  such 
period  of  time,  as  gives  a  sure  indication  of  its  suc- 
cess. Thoroughgoing,  courageous  experiments  of 
this  kind,  however,  of  which  we  are  witnessing  the 
most  magnificent  instances  in  the  Russian  Empire 
and  in  France  at  this  moment,  are  congenial  to  the 
progressive  spirit  of  the  modern  world.  If  the  use 
of  intoxicants  is  ancient,  so  are  the  evils  inherent  in 
their  abuse.  If  normally  strong  men  have  withstood 
its  worst  ravages,  yet  in  all  ages  men  of  average 
strength  have  succumbed  to  it :  their  lives  cut  short 
in  disease  by  its  complications;  their  families  de- 
prived of  normal  guardianship  and  income;  their 
standard  of  life  kept  miserably  low,  and  all  their  crea- 
tive power  destroyed.  It  is  not  merely  degenerate 
weaklings  who  have  been  victimized  by  strong  drink. 
The  average  man  has  suffered  a  more  tragic,  because 
needless,  injury  from  it.  For  the  great  body  of  the 
working  population  the  disappearance  of  this  par- 
ticular temptation  to  wasteful  expenditure  and 
harmful  indulgence  is  unqualified  gain.  For  their 
wives  and  children  it  is  gain  immeasurable.  For  their 
descendants  in  the  third  and  fourth  generation  it  will 
be  compounded  gain,  unqualified  and  immeasurable. 
Whether  the  elimination  of  the  saloon,  and  all  its 
illegal  substitutes,  should  be  by  prohibitory  law  or 
by  the  steady  pressure  of  public  opinion  and  the 
corresponding  increase  of  restrictions  on  its  manu- 
facture and  sale,  may  be  open  to  question.  It 
would  be  a  victory  on  a  higher  plane  if  strong  drink 


172  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

were  to  be  overcome  by  the  voluntary  growth  of 
temperance  principles.  All  the  reasons  for  re- 
fraining from  indulgence  in  strong  drink  are  equally 
strong  reasons  for  not  indulging  other  vicious  ap- 
petites and  it  might  seem  safer  to  save  the  young 
men  altogether  from  carnal  temptations.  There 
are  numerous  measures  short  of  prohibition  which 
are  genuine  temperance  measures;  and  on  a  high 
plane  prohibition  itself  is  not  one.  It  is  too  primi- 
tive, too  naive,  too  direct,  too  crude,  to  be  called 
by  so  moderate  and  restrained  a  term  as  temper- 
ance. But  this  crude  directness,  this  writing  into 
the  law  of  a  downright  conviction,  if  it  is  not  diplo- 
macy or  education,  is  at  least  legitimate  warfare 
and  religion.  It  is  an  impatient  short  cut  with  an 
old  and  nasty  foe.  Like  the  Palmer-Owen  bill  to 
prevent  child  labor, — which  just  failed  of  passage 
in  Congress  and  probably  will  pass  another  year, — 
it  does  the  business.  And  we  can  surely  sym- 
pathize with  the  determined  reformer  who  says  that 
he  is  weary  of  pleading  with  boys  and  men  not  to 
fall  into  the  net  which  plotting  villains  spread  in 
plain  sight  before  the  eyes,  when  it  is  practicable 
to  gather  in  the  nets  once  for  all  and  break  them 
like  playthings  in  the  hands  of  strong  men.  There 
is  no  need  to  keep  temptations  needlessly  about  for 
the  sake  of  developing  character.  All  that  are 
required  to  develop  strong  character  will  remain 
after  we  have  done  our  level  best  not  to  lead  men 
into  temptation  but  to  deliver  them  from  evil. 


MATURITY  173 

Intemperance  is  but  one,  though  the  foremost,  of 
the  evil  habits  which  undermine  the  home.  Lazi- 
ness, shiftlessness,  improvidence,  quarrelsomeness, 
extravagance,  sensuality,  greed,  jealousy, — every 
human  emotion  or  instinct  may  be  perverted  to  an 
evil  habit,  breaking  down  the  normal  life  of  the 
individual  at  work  and  in  the  home. 

CRIME 

Homes  are  destroyed,  or  heavily  burdened,  when 
their  adult  members  commit  criminal  acts.  We 
have  besought  clemency  in  judgment  and  oppor- 
tunity for  reform  on  behalf  of  juvenile  delinquents, 
nor  should  we  be  harsher  in  judging  the  moral  qual- 
ity of  adult  offenders.  Literal  observance  of  the 
injunction  not  to  judge,  if  by  that  we  mean  any 
final  or  authoritative  condemnation  of  individual 
men  and  women,  is  the  only  rational  attitude  of 
society  towards  the  so-called  criminal.  But,  as  in 
the  case  of  juvenile  offenders  against  the  law,  re- 
straint and  correction,  education  for  the  corrigible, 
and  hospital  or  custodial  care  for  the  incorrigible, 
are  not  to  be  regarded  as  evidences  of  moral  judg- 
ments. It  is  not  sentimentalism,  such  as  is  ex- 
hibited in  short  terms  and  a  failure  to  convict 
criminals,  that  is  required. 

Modern  penology  rests  upon  the  theory  of  social 
defense;  and  reformatories,  which  are  educational 
institutions,  and  hospital  colonies  for  mental  or 
moral  imbeciles,  are  its  reliance,  when  probation 


174  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

and  other  preventive  measures  of  a  milder  sort  have 
failed.  The  prison,  conceived  as  an  institution  for 
inflicting  punitive  vengeance,  is  already  as  obsolete 
as  the  whipping  post  and  the  gallows.  Experience 
has  shown  that  they  are  not  deterrents  but  that 
they  are  demoralizing  to  the  society  which  cher- 
ishes them.  Within  the  broad  theory  of  social 
defense  there  is  room  for  many  divergent  views  as 
to  the  best  way  of  suppressing  or  eliminating  crime. 
There  is  the  theory  of  the  Italian  "positivist"  or 
"scientific"  or  "biologic"  school,  that  the  male 
criminal  and  the  female  prostitute  are  born  de- 
generate, and  bear  physical  stigmata  by  which  we 
may  in  time  expect  experts  to  separate  from  normal 
citizens  those  who  need  special  treatment  appro- 
priate to  the  criminal  class,  whether  they  happen  to 
have  committed  definite  crimes  or  not. 

The  idea  is  not  new.  De  Quiros  mentions  a 
mediaeval  edict  ordering  that  in  case  of  doubt  be- 
tween two  suspects,  the  one  showing  more  de- 
formity was  to  undergo  torture;  and  there  was  a 
member  of  the  Medici  family  who  reserved  final 
judgment  until  the  criminal  had  been  examined 
physically  and  then  said,  "Having  seen  your  face 
and  examined  your  head,  we  do  not  send  you  to 
prison,  but  to  the  gallows."  The  idea  is  not  new, 
but  it  is  not  true  either.  What  is  true  about  it  is 
the  principle  that  the  offender  should  be  treated 
according  to  his  nature  rather  than  according  to  his 
specific  offense.     A  competent  physical  and  psycho- 


MATURITY  175 

logical  examiner  can  tell  us  something  about  his 
nature  and  so  lay  the  basis  for  a  more  intelligent 
regimen.  Courts  should  not  fix  sentences.  Judges 
are  neither  physicians  nor  teachers.  Their  ma- 
chinery is  not  adapted  to  the  making  of  a  curricu- 
lum or  the  prescribing  of  a  course  in  corrective  hy- 
giene. Criminal  court  procedure  is  admirably 
adapted  to  discovering  whether  the  right  man  has 
been  caught  and  whether  he  has  committed  some 
offense  of  which  society  must  take  cognizance. 
When  this  has  been  done  the  decision  as  to  how  the 
offender  shall  be  treated,  whether  it  is  fitting  that 
he  should  remain  normally  in  society  or  be  tem- 
porarily or  permanently  secluded,  and  on  what 
terms,  if  at  all,  he  shall  gain  social  rehabilitation, 
should  be  made  by  an  entirely  different  authority, 
with  wholly  different  machinery  and  resources  at 
its  disposal. 

Some  such  reorganization  of  penal  law  and  crim- 
inal procedure  is  in  the  air.  It  is  still  far  from  a 
reality.  An  assistant  district  attorney  in  New 
York,  after  indicating  this  sounder  theory,  pessi- 
mistically adds:  "  Be  that  as  it  may,  vengeance  and 
not  public  spirit  is  still  the  moving  cause  of  ninety 
per  cent  of  all  prosecutions  for  crime."  So,  as  in 
all  other  social  problems,  we  have  something  to 
work  for.     What  we  have  to  do  is: 

First,  to  socialize  the  police,  changing  their 
point  of  view  to  that  of  prevention,  and  when 
an  arrest  is  necessary,  to  the  laying  in  each  case 


176  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

of  a  sound  basis  of  fact  for  a  final  and  logical 
disposition  of  each  case  when  it  comes  to  court. 
In  other  words,  not  necessarily  a  conviction, 
but  such  investigation  of  all  the  circumstances 
as  will  lead  to  appropriate  action,  is  the  test  of 
honest  and  efficient  police  work. 

Second,  to  socialize  the  courts.  This  is  a 
process  long  since  under  way.  Among  its 
landmarks  are  probation,  suspended  sentence, 
indeterminate  sentence,  specialized  courts, 
such  as  those  for  children,  for  women,  and  for 
domestic  relations,  and  night  courts,  and  better 
records,  with  finger  print  identification.  These 
landmarks  are  not  the  thing  itself.  Socializa- 
tion lies  in  the  spirit  of  procedure  of  which  these 
institutions  are  but  the  outward  symbol. 

Third,  to  socialize  the  prisons,  which  means, 
as  prisons,  to  abolish  them  altogether.  Logic- 
ally obsolete,  they  are  still  very  much  in  evi- 
dence and  many  of  them  are  conducted  on  the 
principle  shamelessly  announced  some  years 
ago  in  the  Prison  Congress  by  a  warden  who 
said:  "These  men  are  sent  here  for  us  to  pun- 
ish and  it  is  our  business  to  punish  them  as 
much  as  possible."  A  system  of  probationary 
fines  might  enable  many  to  remain  with  their 
families  while  still  receiving  necessary  disci- 
pline ;  and  the  earnings  of  those  who  are  im- 
prisoned, as  experiments  have  already  demon- 
strated, might  be  used  for  the  partial  support  of 
their  families. 

DISEASE 
The  high  death-rate  of  early  infancy  from  con- 
genital causes  and  intestinal  infections  is  followed, 


MATURITY  177 

as  we  have  seen,  by  a  relatively  low  death-rate  in 
the  years  from  five  to  twenty,  though  health  has 
remained  a  prime  object  of  solicitude  at  every 
period  of  life.  From  this  point  on  mortality  and 
morbidity  increase. 

Most  tragic  of  all  diseases  of  adult  life  are  those 
which  cause  the  alienation  of  the  mind.  Insanity 
does  not  often  afflict  youth,  but  from  the  beginning 
of  maturity  through  old  age  it  is  one  of  the  sinister 
influences  operating  to  break  up  homes  or  to  inter- 
fere with  their  establishment.  There  were  one 
hundred  and  eighty-eight  thousand  persons  in  the 
hospitals  for  the  insane  on  January  I,  1910,  two- 
thirds  of  them  between  the  ages  of  twenty-five  and 
fifty-five,  with  an  average  age  for  all  of  forty-five. 
The  sixty-one  thousand  admitted  during  the  year 
were  somewhat  younger,  as  would  be  expected,  the 
bulk  of  them  being  from  twenty  to  fifty,  and  their 
average  age  forty-one.  In  proportion  to  the  popu- 
lation of  the  same  age,  the  number  of  patients 
admitted  increases  rapidly  up  to  the  age  of  fifty,  and 
again  after  seventy,  with  a  stationary  or  slightly 
lower  ratio  between  fifty  and  seventy:  i.  e.  except 
for  these  two  decades,  liability  to  insanity  increases 
steadily  with  advancing  years.  Fortunately,  over 
half  of  the  insane  men  and  over  a  third  of  the  in- 
sane women  in  hospitals  are  unmarried.  Widows 
and  widowers  constitute  a  rather  larger  proportion 
of  the  insane  than  of  the  general  population;  and 
the  proportion  of  divorced  among  the  insane  is 


178  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

twice  as  great  for  men  and  three  times  as  great  for 
women  as  it  is  in  the  population  at  large. 

In  the  thirty  years  between  1880  and  19 10  the 
insane  in  hospitals  increased  more  than  fourfold  in 
actual  numbers,  and  their  ratio  to  the  population 
was  more  than  doubled.*  The  greater  part  of  this 
increase  is  only  apparent  and  represents  causes  for 
congratulation:  additions  to  hospital  accommoda- 
tions, improved  methods  of  care,  greater  skill  in 
detecting  insanity,  greater  willingness  to  entrust  to 
institutions  persons  formerly  cared  for  at  home. 
There  probably  has  been,  however,  some  real  in- 
crease in  the  relative  amount  of  insanity,  as  there 
has  been  in  suicides,  along  with  the  development  of 
urban  centers  and  other  accompaniments  of  pro- 
gress which  have  not  yet  been  thoroughly  adjusted 
to  the  needs  of  the  normal  life  of  man.  This 
tendency  may  be  counteracted,  and  a  further  de- 
crease effected  after  the  increase  has  been  checked, 
by  establishing  all  along  the  line  those  normal  con- 
ditions of  work  and  living  which  are  desirable  for 
many  other  reasons  as  well.  For,  as  Dr.  Nathan 
Allen,  of  Lowell,  said  at  the  second  meeting  of  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  in  1875: 

This  cannot  be  the  fruit  or  result  of  true 
civilization,  but  comes  from  something  wrong — 
some  artificial  habits,  some  unnatural,  un- 
wholesome way  of  living,  some  false  and  cor- 
rupt state  of  things  in  society. 

*  1880:  82  per  100,000;    1910:  204  per  100,000. 


MATURITY  179 

By  way  of  confirmation  it  may  be  mentioned 
that  ten  per  cent  of  the  patients  admitted  in  1910 
were  reported  to  be  suffering  from  "alcoholic 
psychosis"  and  over  six  per  cent  from  general 
paralysis,  which  is  indicative  of  syphilis. 

It  will  be  necessary  to  enlarge  still  further  our 
hospitals  for  the  insane  and  to  increase  still  more  our 
expenditures  for  this,  already  the  largest  single 
item  in  some  of  our  state  budgets.  Diagnosis,  and 
curative  and  hygienic  treatment  based  on  the 
diagnosis,  are  the  great  needs.  The  interval  be- 
tween the  recognition  of  the  disease  and  admission 
to  a  hospital  or  a  psychiatric  clinic,  already  com- 
paratively brief,  must  be  made  briefer;  and  the 
interval  between  its  onset  and  its  recognition  must 
be  cut  down  to  a  minimum  by  medical  skill  and 
enlightenment  of  the  general  public;  oversight  of 
the  patients  who  leave  the  hospitals  recovered  or 
improved  (eighty-two  per  cent  of  those  discharged) 
must  be  provided  for  a  probationary  period,  in  or- 
der that  dangers  of  relapse  may  be  warded  off;  and 
continuous  oversight  of  those  who  are  discharged 
unimproved,  as  long  as  there  shall  be  any  such. 
Above  all,  perhaps,  or  at  any  rate  under  all,  is 
needed  the  patient  education  of  nervous  children 
and  young  people  in  habits  of  emotional  control, 
and  the  protection  of  all  from  such  a  degree  of 
stress  and  strain  as  the  normal  mind  can  not  reason- 
ably be  expected  to  stand. 

Of  early  mature  life  the  great  scourge  is,  of  course, 


180  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

tuberculosis.  The  principles  of  the  world-wide 
campaign  against  this  leading  cause  of  death  are 
far  too  familiar  to  need  recapitulation.  It  is  in  all 
ways  a  health  campaign.  Its  gospel  of  pure  air 
and  sunlight,  plain  and  substantial  food,  cleanliness, 
abstinence  from  the  use  of  stimulants,  early  diag- 
nosis, and  rest  from  injurious  occupation,  has  cer- 
tainly been  one  of  the  chief  elements  in  the  general 
sanitary  progress  of  the  past  two  decades.  The 
enthusiasm  which  the  anti-tuberculosis  campaign 
has  aroused  is  no  doubt  largely  due  to  this  fact,  that 
nearly  all  its  features  of  which  the  lay  public  takes 
account  are  equally  features  of  almost  any  health 
campaign.  Consumptives  should  not  live  in  damp 
basements  or  in  dark  interior  rooms.  But  who 
should?  Consumptives  must  have  plenty  of  milk 
and  eggs.  But  for  whom  are  those  delicious  ar- 
ticles of  diet  not  appropriate?  Consumptives  must 
be  helped  to  get  out  of  dusty  trades,  overheated 
shops,  work  requiring  a  stooping,  chest  contracting 
posture.  But  for  whom  then  of  the  children  of 
men  are  such  conditions  beneficial?  Consumptives 
should  not  spit  promiscuously,  for  reasons  often 
carefully  explained.  But  is  any  other  desiccated, 
pulverized  sputum  a  welcome  addition  to  the  air 
we  breathe?  Consumptives  should  be  cleanly, 
conscientious  in  not  endangering  the  lives  of  others. 
Are  those  not  universally  desirable  virtues?  Al- 
coholism is  a  dangerous  complication  in  tubercu- 
losis, but  it  is  also  a  dangerous  complication  in  life. 


MATURITY  181 

This  is  not  to  suggest  that  there  is  no  differentia- 
tion, from  the  medical  point  of  view,  in  the  specific 
treatment  of  tuberculosis  and  other  diseases.  Of 
course  there  is,  and  one  of  the  valuable  features  of 
the  tuberculosis  campaign  is  its  insistence  upon 
sanatoria,  clinics,  laboratories,  and  other  special- 
ized equipment  both  for  research  and  for  relief  on 
lines  already  fully  established. 

Typhoid,  pneumonia,  malaria,  rheumatism,  colds, 
and  headaches  all  interfere  with  normal  life  in  the 
home,  as,  of  course,  also  with  incomes  and  efficiency 
at  work.  Elementary  policies  of  social  construc- 
tion demand  consideration  of  each,  to  examine  how 
they  may  best  be  controlled,  how  their  economic 
and  social  effects  may  be  reduced  to  a  minimum  and 
most  judiciously  distributed.  They  are  not  pri- 
vate, personal  matters,  but  social  phenomena.  No 
man  has  a  right  to  have  a  headache  even,  if  society 
can  prevent  it,  much  less  typhoid,  pneumonia,  a 
cold,  or  any  other  communicable  disease.  The 
rights  of  others  are  involved  in  so  many  ways  that 
the  most  unsocialized  egoist  must  recognize  that 
his  diseases  are  affected,  as  the  lawyers  say,  by  a 
public  interest. 

Most  of  the  diseases  to  which  I  have  referred  are 
germ  diseases,  to  be  attacked  by  the  weapons  of 
Pasteur  and  Koch.  There  are  other  diseases  which 
in  contrast  with  these  more  acute  infectious  dis- 
eases may  be  called  degenerative  or  chronic  dis- 
eases, such  as  hardening  of  the  arteries,  cancer, 


182  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

Bright's  disease,  and  organic  diseases  of  the  heart. 
Referring  to  this  distinction  in  an  address  before 
the  American  Public  Health  Association  in  De- 
cember last,  Professor  Irving  Fisher  made  this 
generalization : 

When  we  analyze  the  nature  of  the  present 
improvement,  we  find  it  due  chiefly  to  a  de- 
creased loss  of  life  from  infection  before  middle 
age  in  spite  of  an  increased  loss  of  life  after 
middle  age  from  degeneration.  There  is  thus  a 
race  between  two  tendencies,  a  reduction  in  the 
infectious  diseases  and  an  increase  in  the  so- 
called  degenerative  diseases. 

The  increase  in  the  diseases  of  later  life  is  to  be 
accounted  for  partly  by  the  decrease  in  the  dis- 
eases of  earlier  life.  If  we  do  not  die  of  diphtheria, 
scarlet  fever,  or  measles,  we  survive  to  an  age  in 
which  we  are  likely  to  die  of  cancer  and  arterio- 
sclerosis. If  we  do  not  die  of  tuberculosis  in  early 
manhood,  the  vital  organs  have  a  chance  to  wear 
out.  To  be  sure  it  is  not  to  our  credit  that  they 
wear  out  prematurely,  and  the  time  has  apparently 
come  to  concentrate  on  personal  hygiene  some  of 
that  same  kind  of  attention  that  we  have  given  to 
sanitation.  There  is  no  need  to  diminish  the  one 
in  order  to  increase  the  other.  Probably  the  next 
great  step  ahead  in  the  protection  of  public  health 
is  the  working  out  of  some  plan  by  which  every 
person  shall  be  periodically  examined.  The  Life 
Extension  Institute  presents  one  plan  to  carry  this 


MATURITY  183 

idea  into  effect.  Health  Departments  may  come 
to  offer  such  examinations  free  to  those  unable  to 
pay  for  them. 

The  philosopher  Dooley  makes  his  favorite  char- 
acter, Dock  O'Leary,  complain  that  he  is  not  a  very 
muscular  man  and  that  "some  of  the  windows  in 
these  old  frame-houses  are  hard  to  open."  "He 
says  the  more  he  practises  medicine  th'  more  he 
becomes  a  janitor  with  a  knowledge  of  cookin'. 
He  says  if  people  wud  on'y  call  him  in  befure  they 
got  sick  he'd  abolish  ivry  disease  in  th'  ward  except 
old  age  and  pollyticks.  He  says  he's  lookin' 
forward  to  th'  day  whin  th'  tellyphone  will  ring 
and  he'll  hear  a  voice  sayin',  'Hurry  up  over  to 
Hinnissy's;  he  niver  felt  so  well  in  all  his  life.' 
'All  right:  I'll  be  over  as  soon  as  I  can  hitch  up  th' 
horse.  Take  him  away  f'm  the  supper  table  at 
wanst.' " 

Sickness  insurance,  taking  the  form,  so  far  as 
wage-earners  at  least  are  concerned,  of  social  in- 
surance under  state  control  or  supervision,  is  the 
approved  modern  method  of  distributing  the  finan- 
cial burden  of  sickness.  England  and  Germany 
have  both  developed  very  complete  and  successful, 
though  very  different  systems  of  state  sickness  in- 
surance. We  shall  have  to  work  out  the  problem 
on  somewhat  different  lines  from  either,  probably 
adopting  some  of  the  features  of  each ;  but  work  it 
out  we  must  in  our  own  way,  for  the  hardships  and 


184  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

inequity  of  our  present  lack  of  system  in  this  matter 
will  not  long  seem  tolerable. 

Sickness  insurance  seems  to  me  a  more  pressing 
problem  in  this  country  than  old  age  insurance  or 
unemployment  insurance,  more  necessary  than 
mothers'  pensions  or  any  other  form  of  public 
relief.  It  should  cover,  as  it  does  in  European 
countries,  maternity  insurance  and  life  insurance 
on  an  ampler  scale  than  our  present  industrial  in- 
surance companies  provide.  The  expense  should 
be  divided  between  the  insured  and  his  employer, 
who  will  have  the  same  opportunity  to  pass  his 
part  on  to  consumers  in  the  form  of  slightly  higher 
prices  that  he  has  in  the  case  of  compensation  for 
accidents.  If  necessary,  the  state  can  assume  a 
part  of  the  cost,  as  the  prevention  of  sickness  and 
the  distribution  of  its  burdens  is  properly  a  public 
function. 

Sickness  insurance  does  not  of  necessity  mean 
sickness  prevention,  but  it  is  easy  to  unite  the  two 
harmonious  and  closely  related  policies  into  a  con- 
sistent policy  of  sickness  insurance  and  prevention. 
A  Federal  Health  Department,  vigorous  state 
Health  Departments,  even  more  energetic  and  well 
supported  local  municipal  and  rural  health  boards, 
all  engaged  in  a  well-knit  campaign  of  prevention 
and  education,  will  be  outward  and  visible  signs  of 
that  public  health  ideal  of  which  sickness  insurance 
is  another  normal  expression. 


MATURITY  185 

DIVORCE  AND  DESERTION 
Disease  and  crime  and  bad  habits  are  abnormali- 
ties which  even  in  their  milder  forms  interfere  with 
normal  home  life.  They  may  go  so  far  as  to  de- 
stroy it  altogether,  or  at  least  to  mutilate  it  by  re- 
moving one  or  the  other  or  both  of  the  heads  of  the 
family,  leaving  the  remnant  to  go  on  but  haltingly 
if  it  keeps  together  at  all.  Disease  may  result  in 
premature  death.  Insanity  or  crime  may  leave 
wife  or  husband  worse  than  widowed. 

Family  bonds  may  be  broken  by  the  abrogation 
of  responsibility,  through  divorce  or  its  informal 
substitute,  desertion.  Divorce  is  increasing  rap- 
idly in  the  United  States,  and  so  steadily,  over  the 
forty  years  for  which  records  have  been  studied 
by  the  Census  Bureau,  that  what  is  called  by  a  sort 
of  grim  humor  a  "normal  rate  of  increase"  for  a 
five-year  period  has  been  computed.  It  is  an  in- 
crease of  thirty  per  cent  over  each  preceding  five 
years,  and  that  is  much  faster  than  the  population 
is  increasing.  The  real  significance  of  these  figures 
is  revealed  when  we  learn  that  of  every  thousand 
marriages  in  existence  in  1880,  two  were  dissolved 
during  that  year  by  divorce;  in  1890  there  were 
three;  in  1900,  four.  This  is  a  far  higher  rate  than 
is  found  in  any  foreign  country  for  which  data  are 
available,  with  the  single  exception  of  Japan. 
Hard  times  is  the  only  influence  which  has  a  visible 
effect  in  checking  this  tendency.     After  each  of  the 


186  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

financial  panics  or  industrial  depressions  the  in- 
crease was  retarded  or  cut  off  entirely  for  a  year  or 
two,  though  it  leaped  ahead  faster  than  ever  after 
prosperity  had  been  restored.  This  may  be  due 
partly  to  the  sensitive  response  of  the  marriage- 
rate  to  unfavorable  economic  conditions,  resulting 
in  fewer  new  marriages  and  consequently  fewer 
opportunities  for  divorce  than  there  would  have 
been  under  normal  conditions.  It  suggests  also, 
however,  that  considerations  of  economy  may  have 
had  a  bearing  in  postponing  the  necessity  for  main- 
taining two  establishments  in  place  of  one;  and 
further,  that  the  pressure  of  economic  problems 
may  operate  to  put  in  the  background  the  indul- 
gence of  emotion  and  trivial  personal  grievances. 
In  so  far  as  this  increase  in  divorce  is  merely  a 
writing  into  the  official  records  of  transactions 
which  formerly  were  carried  on  without  reference 
to  laws  or  conventional  standards,  as  is  probably 
true  of  large  parts  of  the  Negro  population,  it  is 
not  an  unhealthy  symptom.  In  so  far  as  it  repre- 
sents open,  frank  adjustment  of  relations  which 
under  harsher  laws  would  have  been  adjusted  sub 
rosa,  it  may  not  be  undesirable.  In  so  far,  however, 
as  it  is  due  to  a  light  assumption,  and  an  equally 
light  repudiation,  of  family  responsibility,  it  repre- 
sents, as  does  desertion,  its  substitute  in  classes  of 
society  with  less  regard  for  conventions  in  such 
matters,  a  grave  menace  to  normal  home  life.  Of 
the  two,  desertion  is  probably  the  graver  problem, 


MATURITY  187 

because  of  the  evasion  of  financial  responsibility 
which  its  informality  favors.  Efforts  should  not 
be  spared — intelligent,  resourceful  efforts,  including 
any  necessary  expenditure  of  money — to  find  de- 
serting husbands  and  fathers  and  exact  of  them  to 
the  utmost  the  fulfillment  of  their  obligations. 
A  desertion  bureau  is  coming  to  be  as  necessary  as 
a  marriage  license  bureau.  The  principal  safe- 
guard, however,  against  this  danger  which  threat- 
ens the  home  lies  not  in  laws  or  courts  but  in  that 
fundamental  education,  that  direction  of  character 
in  youth,  to  which  we  have  had  so  many  occasions 
to  refer  that  it  may  seem  a  monotonous  refrain. 

WIDOWHOOD 

Widowhood  in  itself  is  not  necessarily  a  social 
problem.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  normal  conse- 
quence of  marriage,  and  must  ordinarily  be  the  ex- 
perience of  either  husband  or  wife  for  at  least  a 
brief  period  at  the  close  of  life.  More  often  it  is 
the  wife  who  survives,  both  because  she  is  usually 
younger  than  her  husband,  and  because  women 
have  profited  more  than  men  by  the  general  im- 
provements which  have  been  reducing  the  death- 
rate.  Ordinarily,  too,  it  is  probably  better  for  the 
family  that  it  is  the  mother  who  survives. 

Widowhood  which  comes  prematurely,  whether 
to  husband  or  to  wife,  at  the  beginning  or  in  the 
midst  of  the  normal  course  of  life,  is,  and  has  been 
from  ancient  times,  a  matter  of  serious  social  con- 


188  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

cern.  There  are  comparatively  few  widowers 
under  forty-five  years  of  age,  and  over  sixty-five 
there  are  less  than  half  as  many  widowers  as  wid- 
ows. Among  girls  fifteen  to  nineteen  years  old  one 
in  five  hundred  is  a  widow.  The  proportion  in- 
creases to  eight  per  cent  among  women  thirty-five 
to  forty-four;  twenty-one  per  cent  at  forty-five  to 
sixty-four;  and  fifty-eight  per  cent  among  those 
above  sixty-five  years  of  age. 

Most  widows,  like  most  widowers  and  most  un- 
married adults  of  both  sexes,  in  this  country  nor- 
mally take  care  of  themselves  or  are  taken  care  of 
by  their  relatives.  But  many  widows  who  are 
suddenly  called  upon  by  a  husband's  death  to 
support  themselves  and  several  little  children, 
without  assistance,  are  unable  to  do  so  because  in 
their  youth  they  have  had  no  training,  because  the 
occupations  open  to  them — such  as  sewing,  clean- 
ing, washing,  housework — are  abominably  un- 
organized and  generally  underpaid,  and  because 
there  are  few  well  conducted  employment  and  in- 
telligence offices  to  direct  capable  applicants  to 
desirable  positions. 

The  charitable  societies  and  churches  and  over- 
seers of  the  poor  have  been  coming  but  slowly  to 
realize  what  are  the  essentials  of  constructive  relief 
giving,  how  serious  are  the  dangers  to  health  and 
to  child-welfare  of  an  inadequate  income  and  a  low 
standard  of  living.  My  own  conviction  is  that 
there  should  be  a  recognized  and  organic  relation 


MATURITY  189 

between  the  death  or  chronic  disabling  illness  of 
the  father  of  a  family  and  the  provision  made  for 
the  support  of  the  family  during  a  period — often, 
when  there  are  young  children,  a  prolonged  period 
— of  readjustment  to  new  conditions.  If  a  man  is 
killed  or  disabled  at  his  work,  for  example,  the  in- 
dustry should  provide  a  substitute  for  his  wages,  as 
the  compensation  laws  now  provide.  If  he  dies 
from  disease,  there  should  be  an  insurance  fund, 
to  which  he  himself  and  his  employer  and  the  state 
may  all  have  contributed  in  just  and  reasonable 
proportions,  so  that  the  expenses  of  his  illness  and 
the  care  for  a  time  of  his  wife  and  children  may 
be  met  by  a  fund  which  represents  some  sacrifice 
and  saving,  some  thrift  and  foresight,  on  his  own 
part. 

With  such  compensation  laws  and  social  insur- 
ance of  sickness  and  death  in  full  operation  there 
would  be  comparatively  few  widows  who  could  not 
manage  their  own  difficulties,  with  the  natural  help 
of  friends  and  relatives.  Those  few  could  be  helped 
by  private  charity  or  by  public  relief  as  each  com- 
munity prefers,  and  the  public  relief  might  be 
called  widows'  pensions  if  that  term  is  preferred, 
though  there  is  something  inherently  dishonest  or 
naively  childish  in  all  such  attempts  to  disguise  a 
transaction  by  giving  it  a  different  name;  and 
money  paid  from  the  public  treasury  to  meet  in- 
dividual or  family  needs  will  remain  what  it  has 
always  been,  whatever  it  is  called.     The  answer 


190  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

to  the  old  puzzle  as  to  how  many  legs  a  horse  has 
if  you  call  his  tail  one,  is  not  five  but  four. 

Premature  death  is  the  great  social  tragedy 
whether  it  occurs  in  adult  life  or  in  youth  or  in 
infancy.  The  widowhood  and  orphanage  and  the 
bereft  parenthood  which  are  its  deep  scars  are  but 
the  scars  after  all,  the  evidences  of  the  tragedy,  not 
the  tragedy  itself.  The  prevention  of  accidents  on 
railways  and  in  mills,  the  prevention  of  tubercu- 
losis, the  prevention  of  typhoid  and  malaria  and 
the  hookworm  disease,  the  prevention  of  rheuma- 
tism and  colds  and  headache  and  all  their  disabling 
sequelae,  the  prevention  of  cancer  and  of  those 
other  diseases  of  later  life  about  the  causation  of 
which  so  little  is  yet  known, — these  are  still  the 
big  campaigns  of  social  work. 

Divorce  and  desertion,  intemperance  and  crime, 
insanity  and  disease,  widowhood,  overcrowding  in 
tenements  and  alleys,  unemployment  and  irregular 
employment,  uncompensated  accidents,  sweating 
and  exhaustion  from  overwork,  disaster,  in  a  word, 
from  exploiting  industry  on  the  one  hand  and  from 
broken  homes  on  the  other,  are  the  tragedies  of 
maturity,  as  neglect  is  the  tragedy  of  infancy,  the 
lack  of  nurture  of  childhood,  and  the  perversion  of 
character  of  adolescence.  The  aim  of  normal  life 
is  to  anticipate  and  prevent  these  tragedies.  The 
aim  of  social  work  is  to  mobilize  the  forces  of  so- 
ciety for  honest,  straightforward,  persistent,  com- 
prehensive attack  upon  them  as  pathological  ab- 


MATURITY  191 

normalities  which   no  self-respecting  society  will 
ever  deliberately  tolerate. 

THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  HOME 
The  typical  home  which  occupied  the  center  of 
our  attention  just  now  has  wonderfully  changed  in 
its  outward  physical  aspects  in  recent  years.  Hos- 
pitals, kindergartens,  restaurants,  and  factories 
have  taken  over  on  a  large  scale  functions  once  per- 
formed in  the  home.  Society  has  organized  some- 
what on  horizontal  levels,  taking  children  as  well 
as  adults  out  of  the  home  for  some  activities,  some 
enjoyments,  some  mere  conveniences  for  which 
our  fathers  had  no  parallels.  We  even  hear  of  a 
defensive  parents'  league,  a  sort  of  trade  union  to 
withstand  what  are  felt  to  be  the  unreasonable  de- 
mands of  school  and  society  on  the  time  of  young 
children. 

How  are  these  changes  as  a  whole  affecting  the 
home?  Are  they  making  it  perhaps  superfluous? 
Are  they  destroying  its  unique  character,  trans- 
forming it  into  at  worst  a  mechanism  for  perpetuat- 
ing the  race,  and  at  best  a  high  class  boarding-house 
or  a  sort  of  club  in  which  a  few  congenial  but  by 
age  rather  ill-assorted  people  preserve  the  vestiges 
of  an  obsolete  institution? 

A  closer  analysis  will  lessen  such  apprehensions. 
What  is  it  after  all  mainly  that  the  home  has  lost 
by  the  revolutionary  changes  so  much  in  our  minds? 
Mainly  disease  and  noise  and  dirt  and  drudgery. 


192  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

The  factory  and  the  office  are  better  places  in 
every  way  for  active  work  than  the  home  was  ever. 
A  well-managed  hospital  is  often  if  not  always  a 
better  place  to  be  sick  in  than  a  family  sleeping 
room,  especially  if  the  illness  is  serious,  requiring 
medical  attention  and  nursing.  The  theatre  and 
the  motion-picture  are  after  all  more  entertaining 
than  backgammon  and  puzzle  pictures.  The  rivals 
of  the  home  are  rivals  in  very  limited  spheres.  Its 
unique  sphere  remains  untouched,  the  more  dis- 
tinctly its  own  because  of  the  specialization  of 
functions.  Home  is  not  a  boarding-house  but  a 
complex  of  relations,  physical  and  spiritual,  which 
were  never  more  beautiful,  more  enduring,  or  more 
ennobling  than  in  the  modern  family.  Romance 
has  not  departed  from  it,  though  a  clearer  recogni- 
tion of  ethical  obligations  has  come  into  it.  Re- 
ligion still  creates  its  atmosphere,  though  it  is  a 
milder,  freer,  healthier  religion  than  the  austere 
faith  of  ancient  Rome  or  that  of  the  Mosaic  law, 
both  of  which  have  made  such  a  lasting  impress 
upon  the  family. 

We  may  look  to  the  transforming,  emancipating 
influences  of  the  future  without  apprehension. 
The  family  will  survive,  and  the  home  will  survive 
as  its  habitat,  the  more  wholesome  and  the  more 
efficient  for  all  the  new  resources  of  civilization; 
for  the  normal  and  not  the  abnormal  is  the  fit  to 
survive. 


VI 

LATE  MATURITY 

AND  OLD  AGE 


FULL  MATURITY 

All  periods  of  a  normal  life  are  good.  As  the 
tale  of  life  now  runs  we  may  put  the  twenty  years 
of  full  maturity,  and  therefore  of  greatest  useful- 
ness, from  say  forty-five  to  five  and  sixty. 

For  one  who  has  a  zest  in  life  and  believes  in 
progress  it  is  the  years  just  ahead  that  are  always 
the  best.  We  do  not  expect  the  infant  to  be  look- 
ing eagerly  toward  the  twenties,  or  the  school-child 
to  wax  enthusiastic  about  middle  life,  or  the  young 
man  to  be  dreaming  about  what  he  will  do  in  the 
sixties;  but  to  those  who  are  no  longer  normally 
dreaming  the  dreams  of  childhood  and  adolescence, 
who  have  reached  years  of  discretion,  upon  whom 
the  responsibilities  of  life  are  beginning  to  have  a 
sobering  influence,  and  who  at  least  in  their  own 
children's  eyes  seem  to  be  fully  grown  up,  there 
comes  a  new  vision  to  take  the  place  of  childhood 
dreams,  a  less  blinding  vision  it  may  be,  a  little 
more  closely  related  to  the  serious  thoughts  of 
waking  hours,  less  flighty,  less  romantic,  less  ridicu- 
lously impossible;  and  yet  a  vision  still,  a  revela- 
tion springing  from  no  fleshly  logic,  but  spiritual, 
ennobling,  seeking  out  the  inmost  nature,  the  ut- 
most strength,  the  lowest  layer  of  the  will ;  a  vision 

195 


196  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

of  the  latent  possibilities  of  a  mature  life,  based 
upon  the  foundations  of  sound  infancy  and  child- 
hood, a  wholesome  youth,  and  well  spent  early 
manhood;  a  vision  tinged  still  with  emotion,  with 
the  evidence  of  things  hoped  for,  the  substance  of 
things  not  yet  seen,  but  to  be  seen  on  earth  if  it  be 
His  will — His  will  as  expressed  in  personal  hy- 
giene, in  sanitary  control,  in  the  social  protection  of 
a  normal  environment. 

For  this  period  of  full  maturity,  then,  let  us  claim 
some  twenty  years  or  so — not  to  fix  too  closely  an 
arbitrary  limit  at  the  farther  end;  make  it  three 
score  and  ten  if  you  like  instead  of  sixty-five,  before 
you  acknowledge  old  age,  or  by  reason  of  your 
strength  make  it  four  score;  but  save  me  a  few 
years  for  old  age  proper,  of  which  I  am  not  speaking 
at  all  now,  before  the  body  of  our  normal  life  is 
reduced  again  to  normal  dust. 

Years  do  not  of  themselves  bring  judgment,  or 
stability  of  character,  or  that  respect  and  confidence 
of  fellow-men  on  which  the  greatest  opportunities 
depend.  Years  do  not  of  themselves  restore  health 
squandered  in  profligate  living.  Years  do  not 
bring  economic  prosperity,  or  a  high  standard  of 
living,  or  scholarship,  or  power  of  leadership,  or 
creative  power  of  any  kind.  The  years  are  but  the 
groove  along  which  our  lives  may  move  if  there  is 
propelling  power  to  move  them.  The  more  the 
plane  of  that  groove  inclines  upward,  the  loftier 
its  goal,   the  greater  is  the  energy  necessary  to 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  197 

attain  it,  or  to  move  at  all  in  the  direction  of  that 
goal. 

Assuming  such  vital  energy,  entrusted  once, 
forty-odd  years  ago,  to  the  tiny  nucleus  of  a  cell, 
we  assume  also  that  it  has  been  released  to  vitalize 
the  vibrant  body  of  a  child,  nurtured  and  disci- 
plined, increased  and  treasured  and  put  forth  to 
return  again,  multiplied  ten,  a  hundred  fold  with 
the  passing  years,  pushing  into  forbidden  paths 
but  retrieved  with  penalties,  directed  again  toward 
useful  and  ever  higher  ends,  exercising  the  fingers 
and  hand  of  the  man,  the  eye  and  the  brain  of  him, 
the  physical  powers,  the  moral  powers.  The  nor- 
mal man  has  had  freedom  and  opportunity,  but 
he  has  had  also  the  discipline  denied  to  "privi- 
leged," pampered  individuals.  He  has  had  to 
work,  or  at  least  has  worked,  and  has  learned  by 
experience  the  common  lot.  Male  and  female  he 
has  worked  and  lived  through  forty  years  of  edu- 
cation, preparation,  partial  failure,  trial  and  fail- 
ure, trial  and  success,  and  achievement.  Does  it 
seem  likely  that  his  achievement,  her  achievement, 
has  more  than  begun?  Old  age  at  forty  may  be  a 
melancholy  fact — is  a  melancholy  fact — of  certain 
industries.  That  fact  is  a  bitter  indictment  of 
those  industries  or  of  the  conditions  associated 
with  them.  Men  may  be  worn  out  at  forty,  but 
not  if  they  have  had  normal  inheritance,  have  lived 
normal  lives,  and  have  not  been  subjected  to  ab- 
normal conditions  in  their  work. 


198  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

From  now  on,  the  normal  man — or  woman — if 
an  author,  may  write  his  best  books;  if  he  has  been 
a  politician,  he  may  become  a  statesman;  if  he 
has  been  a  pedagogue,  he  may  become  a  teacher; 
if  he  is  engaged  in  research,  he  may  become  a 
scientist;  if  he  is  of  a  thoughtful  turn  of  mind,  he 
may  become  a  philosopher;  if  he  has  magnetism, 
he  may  become  a  leader;  if  he  has  a  turn  for  busi- 
ness, he  may  become  a  financier  or  a  captain  of 
industry.  Those  who  have  begotten  and  borne 
children  become  in  the  full  sense  fathers  and  moth- 
ers of  those  children  as  they  reach  the  age  of  full 
maturity  and  the  children  are  growing  up  under 
their  watchful  care.  It  is  now  that  artists  should 
paint  their  best  pictures,  poets  write  their  great 
poems,  scholars  produce  their  opera  magna,  preach- 
ers convert  the  heathen  and  edify  the  faithful, 
blacksmiths  hit  their  hardest  and  surest  blows, 
gardeners  cultivate  their  most  superb  roses,  fire- 
men and  policemen  be  most  ready  to  risk  their 
lives  and  lose  them  least  often,  physicians  and 
surgeons  command  most  completely  the  confidence 
of  the  sick  and  disabled  and  deserve  it  most,  bank- 
ers and  directors  of  railways  and  industrial  cor- 
porations stand  highest  as  stewards  of  great  trus- 
teeship and,  to  express  it  modestly,  run  least  risk 
of  criminal  prosecution. 

In  none  of  the  great  fields  of  usefulness,  from 
manual  labor  to  the  highest  levels  of  intellectual 
creation,  is  there  any  valid  presumption  that  maxi- 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  199 

mum  efficiency  is  normally  reached  under  forty  or 
that  it  should  show  appreciable  diminution  under 
sixty  or  sixty-five. 

PROLONGATION  OF  WORKING  LIFE 
The  prolongation  of  the  working  life  is  a  social 
ideal,  quite  comparable  in  definiteness  and  in  the 
strength  of  its  appeal  to  that  prolongation  of  child- 
hood which  education  and  physiology  alike  de- 
mand. The  one  is  indeed  the  natural  corollary  of 
the  other.  Childhood  is  prolonged  in  its  protec- 
tion, its  postponement  of  wage  earning,  its  spon- 
taneous freedom,  both  for  its  own  sake,  because 
that  is  the  natural,  the  normal,  the  human,  the 
God-like  way  to  spend  the  years  of  childhood ;  and 
also  because  that  is  the  natural  and  usually  the 
only  guarantee  of  a  prolonged  and  effective  work- 
ing life  in  the  years  of  maturity. 

Work  in  adolescence,  on  education's  terms  only, 
not  for  gain  but  for  development  and  preparation, 
leads  to  the  capacity  for  work  later  on  for  the  sake 
of  the  product,  for  the  productive  efficiency  which 
is  a  natural,  an  irresistible  expression  of  human 
energy,  just  as  recreational  activities,  the  more 
passive  and  receptive  occupations,  are  a  natural 
expression  of  a  capacity  for  leisure. 

Our  ideal  is  that  in  the  skilled  trades,  in  indus- 
trial pursuits  of  all  kinds,  and  in  agriculture,  the 
active  working  life  of  man  shall  be  prolonged  until 
there   are   or   might   be   grandchildren,    until    the 


200  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

youngest  sons  and  daughters  are  grown,  and  the 
older  ones  are  more  like  partners  and  comrades 
than  like  children,  with  established  occupations 
and  homes  of  their  own,  into  which,  if  it  seems 
wise,  the  retiring  laborers  may  come  at  last  as 
honored  guests,  or,  especially  in  widowhood,  as 
welcome  members  of  the  household,  full  of  years 
and  honor  and  respect,  no  worn-out  broken  wrecks 
of  industry,  but  hale  and  hearty  still,  moving  in  and 
out  with  dignity  and  a  just  consciousness  of  honest, 
strenuous,  useful  work,  cheerfully  undertaken, 
regretfully  relinquished,  and  now  worthily  trans- 
ferred to  the  broad  shoulders  of  competent  matur- 
ity in  the  next  generation. 

The  prolongation  of  the  working  life  is  desirable 
from  the  employer's  point  of  view.  It  means  a 
longer  time  to  realize  on  the  initial  investment  in 
training.  It  means  fewer  changes,  better  rela- 
tions, a  steadier  labor  force,  fewer  strikes  and  mis- 
understandings, less  animosity,  more  loyalty.  It 
is  even  more  desirable  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
workers  themselves  and  their  families.  Whether 
they  work  for  wages,  as  at  present  the  vast  majority 
of  industrial  and  clerical  workers  do,  or,  as  they 
may  in  a  day  of  more  industrial  democracy,  on 
some  cooperative  plan  for  themselves,  it  is  advan- 
tageous to  be  able  to  work  for  forty  years  instead 
of  twenty.  To  the  individual  and  his  family  there 
is  an  economic  and  a  moral  loss  when  the  purposes 
of  education  and  nurture  are  thwarted  by  a  tragic 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  201 

breaking  down  of  health  and  efficiency  at  middle 
age.  For  the  individual  himself,  whatever  his 
vocation,  sex,  or  station  in  life,  there  is  more  than 
a  mere  arithmetic  gain  when  a  few  years  are  added 
to  the  period  of  the  working  life.  We  study  with 
appreciation  and  pleasure  the  lengthening  span 
of  life  as  a  whole,  but  most  significant  of  all  is  the 
lengthening  span  of  its  active,  vigorous,  productive 
period.  For,  constituted  as  we  are,  there  is  a 
pleasure  directly  associated  with  work — with  the 
putting  forth  of  creative  energy — which  is  unique, 
which  is  wholly  denied  to  the  invalid,  to  the  vale- 
tudinarian. This  is  not  to  cast  slurs  upon  the 
compensating  pleasures  which  they  may  be  so 
fortunate  as  to  discover.  We  are  to  have  a  place — 
a  large  place — in  genuine  old  age  for  those  pleasures 
also ;  but,  like  those  of  every  other  stage  of  normal 
life,  they  must  bide  their  time.  Prematurely  antic- 
ipated, they  crowd  out  keener,  more  appropriate 
experiences,  which,  if  lost  when  they  are  due,  are 
lost  forever. 

The  expansion  of  the  working  life  is  not  to  be 
one  of  empty  duration.  To  be  of  value,  it  must  be 
of  more  than  one  dimension :  longer  in  years,  deeper 
in  productive  efficiency,  broader  in  variety.  We 
demand  a  working  life  fuller  in  return  to  the  worker, 
more  remunerative,  and  entitled  to  the  greater 
remuneration  because  more  productive,  freer  from 
dangers  and  fears  and  uncertainties,  taking  a 
greater  share  in  planning,  directing,  and  determin- 


202  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

ing  the  conditions  of  industry,  transforming  laborer 
into  capitalist,  entrepreneur,  and  owner  of  natural 
resources — not  necessarily,  not  even  probably,  by 
revolution  or  violence,  but  by  evolutionary  de- 
velopment, which  may  be  more  rapid  and  more 
sure  than  revolution,  by  emancipating  education 
and  conscious  social  construction. 

Early  or  easy  realization  of  the  ideal  of  a  pro- 
longed working  life  will  not  come  of  itself.  In- 
dustrial evolution  seems  to  be  moving  in  the  con- 
trary direction.  Invention  in  the  arts  has  out- 
stripped invention  in  social  policy.  Long  hours,  a 
seven-day  week,  the  constant  strain  on  nerves  and 
muscles  in  tending  machines,  the  minute  sub- 
division of  labor,  the  inconsiderate  application  of 
efficiency  tests,  the  speeding  process,  the  setting 
of  the  pace  and  rhythm  by  power-driven  machines 
instead  of  by  the  natural  movements  of  human 
beings,  the  cunning  shift  from  time-wage  to  piece- 
wage  and  back  again  in  such  a  way  as  to  extract  the 
last  ounce  of  energy  from  labor;  the  growing  ap- 
preciation of  swift  deftness,  of  springy  alertness, 
of  plastic  adaptability  in  industry;  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  individual  worker  from  the  conscious 
knowledge  of  the  employer  through  his  submer- 
gence in  mere  numbers  and  the  more  impersonal 
and  arbitrary  estimate  of  his  usefulness  which 
naturally  follows;  the  increasing  bitterness  and 
intensity  of  labor  controversies;  and  the  relative 
increase  in  the  number  of  industrial  wage-earners 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  203 

in  the  population,  whose  working  life  is  shorter  than 
that  of  clerical,  professional,  and  agricultural  work- 
ers— many  of  the  large  outstanding  facts  of  modern 
industry  point  to  an  earlier  rather  than  a  later  old 
age.  And  yet  these  facts  are  all  wrong  and  the 
ideal  will  prevail  over  them.  We  shall  come  to 
understand  these  stubborn  facts  of  industry  and 
change  them.  We  shall  eliminate  the  dangers 
which  industry  has  developed.  We  shall  increase 
physical  resisting  power.  We  shall  cut  down 
hours,  bring  in  more  leisure  and  variety.  We  shall 
adjust  industry  to  man  and  install  some  system  of 
human  audit  by  which  the  effect  of  industry  on 
physical  and  moral  well-being  can  be  accurately 
judged,  by  which  its  essential  nature,  not  as  a 
source  of  dividends,  but  as  occupation  for  rational 
living  men,  can  be  evenly  and  continuously  ap- 
praised. 

When  the  question  arises  as  to  how  these  things, 
which  we  have  so  clearly  failed  to  do,  are  to  be 
done,  there  is  no  new  answer.  We  may  pin  our 
faith  to  the  various  means  by  which  we  have  made 
progress  already;  for  there  are  other  facts  of  in- 
dustry than  those  to  which  we  have  just  referred. 
We  rely  first  on  trade  unions  and  the  principle  of 
collective  bargaining  which  they  represent.  When 
a  prominent  banker  at  a  public  hearing  recently 
expressed  ignorance  as  to  what  collective  bargain- 
ing is,  and  made  an  equally  naive  and  refresh- 
ing  acknowledgment,   when   it  was   explained   to 


204  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

him,  that  it  looked  like  a  good  thing,  he  was  not, 
after  all,  more  than  a  few  years  behind  a  great  many 
employers  who  have  been  finding  out  to  their  sur- 
prise that  a  bargain  made  by  an  association  of  em- 
ployers with  an  association  of  employees  has  many 
advantages  and  does  not  necessarily  or  even  prob- 
ably mean  disaster  or  bankruptcy. 

We  may  rely,  secondly,  on  voluntary  action  by 
individual  employers,  and  by  officers,  directors, 
and  stockholders  of  corporations,  action  based 
upon  accurate  and  comprehensive  surveys,  inti- 
mate personal  acquaintance  with  workingmen  and 
their  families.  I  am  firmly  of  the  belief  that  the 
normal  man  of  wealth  and  power  in  industry  does 
not  desire  to  exploit  or  oppress;  to  destroy  health 
or  morals  and  subject  children  or  youth  to  undue 
risks  or  certain  injury;  to  take  dirty  profits  either 
from  customers  or  from  employees;  and  that  in- 
creasing knowledge  will  mean  increasing  prolonga- 
tion of  life  by  the  voluntary  improvement  of  in- 
dustrial conditions. 

We  may  rely,  last,  on  public  opinion,  working 
when  necessary,  but  not  exclusively,  through  legis- 
lation and  the  courts.  Trade  unions,  voluntary 
reforms  in  industry,  the  pressure  of  public  opinion 
and  education,  are  the  means  by  which  we  are  to 
secure  that  normal  life  for  working  men  and  women 
and  for  their  families  at  home  which  is  the  only 
remedy  of  premature  old  age. 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  205 

OLD  AGE 

Unmistakable  old  age,  so  long  denied,  comes  at 
last  to  its  own :  not  in  ugly,  tragic  mask,  but  gentle ; 
not  hastening  or  loitering.  With  a  touch  of  humor, 
of  philosophy,  with  a  sense  of  life's  irony  and  a 
knowledge  of  its  loving  kindness,  old  age  comes  at 
the  appointed  time.  The  autumn  leaves  upon  the 
branches  are  not  more  beautiful  than  the  spirit  of 
the  old  who  have  lived.  The  leaves  have  felt  upon 
their  faces  storms  and  sunshine,  have  fulfilled  their 
end  in  nature,  and  when  the  unseen  spirit  of  a 
natural  end  of  life  puts  its  finger  upon  them,  they 
yield  a  consummation  in  color,  in  beauty,  in  ac- 
quiescence, not  less  striking  than  the  response  of 
swelling  veins  and  bursting  vernal  energy  in  the 
early  life  of  the  year.  So  old  age  has  its  own 
beauty,  its  own  appropriate  medium  of  expression, 
its  acquiescence  in  a  normal  order  of  the  universe 
for  which  the  seventy  or  the  eighty  years  are  in  one 
sense  but  a  long  approach. 

Clearly  as  adolescence  differs  from  infancy,  so 
clearly  is  old  age  differentiated  from  the  maturity 
of  middle  life.  Physiological  changes  take  place. 
Habits  become  increasingly  a  reliance  in  preference 
to  independent  conscious  judgments.  The  physi- 
cal strength  undoubtedly  wanes,  and  an  increased 
liability  to  degenerative  diseases  compels  recogni- 
tion. Vision  becomes  dim  or  reasserts  its  vigor. 
Memory  plays  strange  tricks.     Appetite  demands 

14 


206  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

a  change  of  diet  and  passion  relaxes  its  hold.  In- 
terests shift  and  contract,  and  though  the  phrases 
of  regret  at  loss  of  active  participation  in  life's 
affairs  may  remain  upon  the  lips,  we  know  that 
they  may  easily  express  less  poignant  emotions 
than  would  similar  expressions  in  some  temporary 
breakdown  in  earlier  years. 

These  changes  may  not  be  pathological  at  all, 
like  those  of  premature  old  age,  but  natural  and 
welcome.  To  die  in  harness,  cut  off  suddenly  in 
the  fullness  of  powers,  may  be  a  source  of  personal 
satisfaction,  but  it  is  egregious  selfishness.  It  is  a 
mediaeval,  not  a  modern,  ideal.  It  represents  the 
ambition  of  a  warrior  seeking  glory  in  action,  not 
the  sober  and  quiet  ambition  of  the  normal  citizen 
of  a  modern  state,  who  is  willing  to  play  the  part 
to  the  end  and  to  keep  the  useful  work  of  his  com- 
munity moving  forward  without  break  of  continu- 
ity, with  the  social  welfare  as  its  aim.  Such  smooth 
perfection  of  social  organization  implies  a  period  of 
easy  relaxation  at  the  end,  as  of  preparation  in  the 
earlier  part  of  life,  a  period  with  its  own  problems, 
its  own  burdens,  its  own  contributions  to  social 
well-being. 

DEPENDENCE  IN  OLD  AGE 
The  first  and  most  obvious  social  problem  con- 
nected with  old  age  is  that  of  support. 

Old  age  dependence  ranks  in  importance  with 
the  care  of  the  sick  and  of  widows  with  dependent 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  207 

children,  far  exceeding  the  problem  of  orphanage 
or  unemployment.  In  1910  there  were  in  the 
United  States  just  under  four  million  persons  who 
were  over  sixty-five  years  of  age.  Mr.  Lee  W. 
Squier,  who  has  studied  old  age  dependence  sym- 
pathetically, estimates  that  more  than  a  quarter  of 
these  were  in  want  and  supported  by  charity,  public 
or  private.  Whether  it  is  a  million  and  a  quarter, 
as  Mr.  Squier  thinks,*  or  two  million  and  a  half, 
as  Mr.  Berger  says  in  a  speech  in  Congress, — though 
he  is  speaking  of  those  over  sixty,  and  includes  all 
who  have  an  income  of  less  than  ten  dollars  a  week, 
— or  only  the  half  million  or  so  that  could  probably 
be  counted  from  statistical  sources  as  in  institu- 
tions or  receiving  partial  support  at  home,  the 
number  of  the  aged  who  require  support  presents 
a  problem  serious  enough  to  justify  far  more  atten- 
tion than  it  has  received. 

Our  main  reliance  in  this  country  has  been  on — 
(1)  The  continued  earning  power  of  the  aged  them- 
selves; (2)  savings  for  old  age;  (3)  support  by 
grown  children  or  other  relatives;  (4)  United 
States  pensions  and  state  pensions  to  Confederate 

*  The  principal  item  in  Mr.  Squier's  table,  about  three- 
quarters  of  a  million,  consists  of  United  States  pensioners. 
A  census  report,  published  since  his  book  appeared,  shows 
that  his  estimate  of  the  number  of  persons  over  sixty-five  years 
of  age  in  almshouses,  the  next  item  numerically  in  his  list,  was 
much  too  high.  Instead  of  ninety-five  thousand  over  sixty- 
five,  there  were  only  forty-six  thousand  over  sixty.  Mr. 
Squier's  estimate  was  based  on  the  number  reported  as  in 
almshouses  in  Massachusetts. 


208  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

veterans;  (5)  private  homes  for  aged,  partly  main- 
tained by  admission  fees  of  their  inmates ;  (6)  pub- 
lic almshouses;  (7)  outdoor  relief,  and  (8)  private 
allowances  through  churches  or  charitable  agen- 
cies, for  which  the  funds  may  be  supplied  in 
part  by  relatives,  former  employers,  or  friends  of 
the  beneficiary.  There  are,  of  course,  some  de- 
pendent poor  in  workhouses  and  jails  as  vagrants, 
although  some  other  condition  than  age  and  in- 
firmity is  assumed  to  be  present  when  the  aged 
find  their  only  refuge  in  correctional  institutions. 
There  are,  no  doubt,  some  in  hospitals  and  asy- 
lums for  the  insane  whose  senility  is  not  of  such  a 
character  as  to  require  institutional  care  except  for 
their  lack  of  any  other  means  of  support. 

The  federal  and  state  pensions,  in  theory  merely 
a  deferred  recognition  of  services  performed  now 
half  a  century  ago,  have  become  in  fact  the  main 
national  provision  for  old  age.  Judged  from  that 
point  of  view,  it  is  not  an  equitable  provision.  The 
federal  pensions  have  been  distributed  mainly  in 
the  northern  states,  where  the  need  for  old-age 
support  is  certainly  not  greatest.  Their  cost  has 
been  enormous.  They  have  had  no  relation  to 
proved  need,  to  thrift  or  merit.  As  an  old-age 
provision  they  have  violated  every  known  canon  of 
actuarial,  ethical,  and  social  policy.  They  are  a 
cost  of  the  Civil  War,  and  in  that  light  alone  could 
they  be  defended  as  devised  and  administered. 
And  yet  the  federal  and  state  pensions  are  not 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  209 

without  some  substantial  justification  in  their 
social  results.  If  the  government  had  not  expended 
the  four  and  a  half  billion  dollars  which  it  has  spent 
in  pensions,  the  problem  of  old-age  dependence 
would  have  been  far  more  pressing  than  it  has  been. 
Much  of  that  money  has  been  wasted,  some  of  it 
has  been  demoralizing,  but  it  has  been  one  means  of 
support,  perhaps  on  the  whole  the  best  means  that 
we  have  had  after  savings  and  maintenance  by 
relatives. 

One  minor  reason  for  the  long-continued  poverty 
of  southern  states,  as  compared  with  the  greater 
economic  prosperity  of  the  North,  has  doubtless 
been  the  drain  on  its  resources  to  care  for  its  aged 
white  and  colored  dependents.  The  pension  fund, 
drawn  from  general  taxation,  has  been  expended  in 
the  North.  Another  fund,  not  so  enormous  but 
still  large  in  the  aggregate,  has  then  had  to  be  raised 
for  the  support  of  the  relatively  larger  and  poorer 
number  who  served  the  lost  cause  or  were  impover- 
ished by  the  war.  The  result  has  been  a  violent 
national  maladjustment,  which  cannot  be  without 
its  effect  on  physical  well-being  and  economic  pros- 
perity. 

Whatever  the  sources  of  their  support,  the  aged 
may  be  cared  for  either  in  their  own  or  their  chil- 
dren's homes,  or  in  some  kind  of  institution. 

Personal  thrift  and  the  filial  loyalty  of  children 
may  take  either  of  these  forms.  A  chair  by  the 
family  fireside,  at  the  family  board,  and  in  the 


210  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

family  councils,  would  no  doubt  be  the  preference 
of  the  majority  when  conditions  are  at  all  favorable. 
The  argument  in  favor  of  such  normal  mingling 
with  kindred  is  not  the  same  as  that  for  home  life 
of  children,  and  perhaps  it  is  not  so  universally 
convincing.  Perhaps  for  some  there  is  a  certain 
attraction  in  the  independence  of  an  institution 
where  board  is  paid  or  a  life  fee.  Independence 
may  seem  an  odd  term  for  any  kind  of  institutional 
life,  where  there  must  be  a  fixed  routine,  definite 
limitations  on  liberty  of  movement  and  action; 
yet  just  as  a  hotel  is  a  place  of  greater  freedom  in 
a  sense  for  the  guest  than  the  most  hospitable  home, 
so  within  the  cadaver  of  its  regulations  an  institu- 
tion may,  after  all,  offer  a  comparatively  untram- 
meled  and  untroubled  haven  to  a  storm-tossed  soul. 
As  between  maintaining,  if  possible,  a  separate 
domestic  establishment  and  going  to  live  with  sons 
and  daughters-in-law,  or  daughters  and  sons-in- 
law,  many  would  justly  prefer  the  former.  As 
between  being  boarded  out  in  the  family  of  a 
stranger  and  accommodation  in  a  private  or  church 
institution,  many  would  prefer  the  latter.  But 
all  four  plans,  and  many  variations  upon  them,  are 
legitimate  for  those  respectively  who  prefer  them. 
Any  of  them  is  better  than  neglect,  and  some  one 
or  a  combination  of  them  is  a  possible  means  of 
caring  for  a  very  large  proportion  of  those  who  are 
past  work.     We  put  savings  and  care  by  grown 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  211 

sons  and  daughters,  therefore,  as  not  only  a  natural, 
but  a  desirable  provision  for  old  age. 

THRIFT 

Thrift  is  an  old-fashioned  but  not  an  obsolete 
virtue.  Children  should  not  support  able-bodied 
young  parents,  but  able-bodied  young  people  may 
very  properly  support  their  parents  or  grandparents 
in  old  age.  Personal  responsibility  for  one's  own 
well-being  is  not  the  most  popular  doctrine  in  these 
days,  but  it  is  sound  doctrine,  nevertheless.  We 
who  preach  constantly  social  responsibility  are  in 
danger  of  carrying  it  to  an  extreme,  just  as  the  doc- 
trine of  an  overruling  providence  in  supreme  con- 
trol of  the  universe  has  sometimes  been  used  to 
undermine  a  healthy  feeling  of  personal  responsi- 
bility for  that  particular  fraction  of  it  which  has 
been  entrusted  to  us. 

When  it  is  held  that  wages  and  salaries  in 
America  do  not  permit  saving,  or  do  so  only  at 
the  expense  of  immediate  welfare,  we  may  cite  the 
analogous  instance  of  the  lawyer's  demonstration 
to  a  client  that  they  could  not  put  him  in  jail  for 
what  he  had  done.  Unfortunately  for  the  argu- 
ment, and  for  the  client,  he  was  in  jail  at  the  time. 
So  the  fact  is  that  American  wage-earners  and  small 
tradesmen  and  clerks  and  farmers  do  save,  and 
what  many  actually  do,  more  could  do,  without 
incurring  the  risk  of  slighting  immediate  needs  of 
the  family.     Saving  in  practice  goes  along  with  a 


212  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

higher,  rather  than  a  lower,  standard  of  current 
expenditure. 

Thrift  has  received  a  bad  name  preparatory  to 
the  hanging,  but  thrift  is  not  the  mean,  unsocial, 
antiquated  relic  of  primitive  society  that  it  has 
been  so  often  of  late  represented  to  be.  Thrift 
is  little  else  than  strength  of  character,  a  sober 
measuring  of  future  against  immediate  needs.  It 
is  a  generous  and  manly  trait,  a  certain  soundness 
at  the  core  resisting  the  rottenness  of  civilization 
and  the  dry-rot  of  stupidity.  Thrift  should  be 
taught  in  the  public  schools,  as  the  Massachusetts 
Commission  on  Old  Age  Pensions  recommends. 
It  should  be  encouraged  in  the  home.  Facilities 
for  its  exercise  should  be  multiplied.  The  savings 
which  are  its  result  should  be  jealously  safeguarded, 
and  it  should  have  its  natural  reward. 

FAMILY  RESPONSIBILITY 
Family  solidarity  also  is  an  ideal  for  which  future 
ages  will  have  need,  as  past  ages  have  needed  it. 
Covert  and  indirect  assaults  on  the  family  are  a 
part  of  much  revolutionary  propaganda,  but  in- 
creasingly in  this  country  economic  revolution  is 
trying  to  free  itself  from  old-world  association  with 
such  attacks.  There  is  certainly  no  reason  why 
conservative  advocates  of  social  insurance,  whether 
for  sickness,  unemployment,  or  old  age,  should  have 
any  sympathy  for  sneers  against  the  fullest  de- 
velopment of  family  responsibility  and  solidarity. 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  213 

Social  insurance  rests  upon  the  family  in  its  in- 
tegrity. Non-contributory  old-age  pensions,  wid- 
ows' pensions,  and  all  other  forms  of  public  poor 
relief,  by  the  very  terms  used  to  describe  them, 
such  as  "the  endowment  of  old  age,"  "the  endow- 
ment of  motherhood,"  "the  right  to  relief,"  all 
involve  another  and  opposing  principle.  The  one 
principle  is  that,  given  a  fair  and  reasonable  oppor- 
tunity, the  individual  is  to  be  held  responsible  for 
taking  advantage  of  it ;  that  ordinary  mishaps  and 
accident  under  normal  conditions  are  to  be  met  by 
savings  and  the  helping  hand  of  relatives,  neigh- 
bors, and  friends;  that  even  sickness,  unemploy- 
ment, and  old  age  are  personal  and  family  matters, 
leading  to  public  dependence  only  under  excep- 
tional and  unforeseeable  circumstances.  The  other 
principle  is  that  society  and  not  the  individual  is 
responsible  for  all  these  misfortunes  and  burdens; 
that  each  condition  of  natural  dependence,  brief  or 
prolonged,  such  as  maternity,  illness,  unemploy- 
ment, invalidity,  old  age,  and  poverty  in  all  its 
manifestations,  is  to  be  met  by  the  state,  i.  e.  by 
public  funds  raised  by  taxation.  The  individual 
need  give  himself  no  concern:  his  children  will  be 
supported  from  birth,  his  own  old  age  maintained 
in  comfort,  whatever  his  extravagances,  his  idle- 
nesses, or  his  eccentricities. 

Pensions  of  all  kinds,  except  retiring  allowances 
from  funds  provided  in  the  employment  in  which 
the  worker  has  been  engaged,  represent  the  latter 


214  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

of  these  views.  Social  insurance,  except  in  its 
government  subsidies,  which  are  a  compromise 
concession,  represents  the  former.  The  sturdiest 
advocates  of  personal  responsibility  and  family 
solidarity  may,  therefore,  work  zealously  for  sick- 
ness insurance,  for  workmen's  compensation,  for 
unemployment  insurance,  for  compulsory  life  in- 
surance and  insurance  for  old  age,  without  incon- 
sistency. What  saves  social  insurance  from  the 
curse  of  demoralizing  paternalism  is  that  it  en- 
courages thrift  and  rewards  it;  that  the  administra- 
tion may  be  democratic  rather  than  bureaucratic; 
that  it  is  a  rational  distribution  of  risks  on  a  sound 
actuarial  basis  rather  than  the  handing  out  of  un- 
earned gratuities,  gathered  from  grudging  tax- 
payers, manipulated  for  political  advantage,  and 
defended  on  dishonest  and  fallacious  grounds. 
That  is  as  accurate  a  description  as  I  know  how  to 
give  of  pensions  and  public  poor  relief  as  ordinarily 
administered. 

In  so  far,  therefore,  as  old  age  requires  support  * 

*  For  the  most  thorough  discussion  of  the  whole  subject, 
aside  from  Mr.  Squier's  book  on  old  age  dependency,  to  which 
reference  has  been  made,  and  the  report  of  the  Massachusetts 
Commission  of  1910,  attention  is  invited  to  the  admirable 
treatise  on  Social  Insurance  by  Dr.  I.  M.  Rubinow,  in  which 
there  are  several  chapters  on  the  old  man's  problem.  Dr. 
Rubinow  looks  upon  pensions  as  half-way  steps  and  perhaps 
necessary  supplements  to  social  insurance,  and  at  least  a 
public  recognition  of  the  need.  To  me  they  seem,  on  the 
contrary,  to  be  a  vicious  and  unsatisfactory  makeshift,  post- 
poning rather  than  bringing  nearer  the  substantial  and  con- 
sistent system  of  social  insurance  which  we  both  desire. 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  215 

supplementary  to  savings  and  the  natural  contri- 
butions of  sons  and  daughters,  it  may  advan- 
tageously come  not  from  pensions  or  other  poor 
relief,  but  from  a  well-devised  system  of  social  in- 
surance, requiring  contributions  from  insured  and 
employers,  and  administered,  or  its  administration 
supervised  and  guaranteed,  by  the  state. 

PROLONGATION  OF  OLD  AGE 

The  prolongation  of  life  as  a  whole  follows  nat- 
urally the  prolongation  of  childhood  and  of  the 
working  period  of  life,  but  there  are  special  in- 
fluences at  work  independently  to  the  same  end. 
Science  has  been  baffled  by  an  increase  in  the  dis- 
eases of  later  life,  but  is  diligently  employing  its 
natural  instruments  of  research  and  experimenta- 
tion in  a  more  vigorous  attack  upon  those  diseases. 
Changes  in  diet  and  in  habits  of  recreation  conspire 
with  medical  research  to  extend  that  period  which 
lies  beyond  the  end  of  work.  But  again,  as  in  the 
expansion  of  earlier  periods,  it  is  not  mere  exten- 
sion that  is  significant.  The  emptying  of  old  age 
of  its  conquerable  diseases,  its  disabling  infirmities, 
its  sufferings  and  anxieties  and  fears,  will  be  a  more 
notable  benefaction  than  the  mere  lengthening  of 
years.  If,  by  reason  of  strength,  not  by  reason  of 
drugs  or  extraordinary  watchfulness,  the  ten  years 
are  added  to  real  living,  the  race  will  be  ten  years 
ahead.  But  if  there  is  strength  and  a  time  to  put 
it  forth,  there  will  be  need  of  giving  thought  to 


216  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

the  manner  of  its  exercise.  Occupations  suitable 
to  retired  age  are  a  social  problem,  like  Froebel's 
gifts  or  occupations  in  the  kindergarten.  Their 
purpose,  to  be  sure,  is  different.  Not  instruction, 
but  the  exercise  of  long-matured  instincts;  not 
growth  and  work  and  the  making  of  things,  but 
mellow  expansion,  reminiscence  and  reflection,  the 
play  of  mental  imagery,  and  the  testing  of  things, 
are  the  typical  and  characteristic  occupations  of 
the  leisure  of  the  evening  of  life. 

Cicero  disposed  for  all  time  of  the  idea  that  old 
age  is  miserable.  In  his  systematic  brief*  he  sets 
forth  the  reasons  for  thinking  that  it  may  be  so : 

(i)  It  calls  us  away  from  the  transaction  of 
affairs. 

(2)  It  renders  the  body  more  feeble. 

(3)  It  deprives  us  of  almost  all  pleasures. 

(4)  It  is  not  very  far  from  death. 

Indignantly  denying  the  first  charge,  he  says  that 
the  old,  to  be  sure,  do  not  engage  in  the  occupa- 
tions of  youth,  but  in  other  and  better  things. 
For  himself  he  prefers  to  spend  his  old  age  on  a 
farm,  for  where  can  age  warm  itself  better  in  the 
sunshine  or  by  the  fire,  or  be  more  refreshed  by 
shady  nooks  and  cool  baths?  Nothing,  he  thinks, 
can  be  richer  in  utility  or  more  attractive  in  ap- 
pearance than  a  well-tilled  field ;  and  certainly  age 
is  no  hindrance  to  these  pleasures,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, invites  and  urges  to  their  enjoyment. 
*  De  Senectute. 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  217 

On  the  second  point,  Cicero  replies  that  the  old 
man  no  more  feels  the  lack  of  the  strength  of  a 
young  man  than  when  a  young  man  he  felt  the 
want  of  the  strength  of  a  bull  or  an  elephant. 
What  a  man  has  that  he  ought  to  use. 

We  do  not  follow  him  so  readily  on  the  third 
point,  when  in  his  stoic  philosophy  he  counts  it 
the  highest  praise  to  old  age  that  it  has  no  great 
desire  for  any  pleasures.  It  lacks  banquets,  he 
says,  and  piled-up  boards  and  fast-coming  goblets; 
it  is,  therefore,  also  free  from  drunkenness  and  in- 
digestion and  sleeplessness.  Aside  from  the  pleas- 
ures of  agriculture,  in  which  congenial  vocation 
Cicero  especially  cites  the  manuring  of  the  fields  as 
one  of  the  most  thoroughly  enjoyable  features, 
which  he  blames  Hesiod  for  not  having  valued 
highly  enough,  he  finds  various  other  pleasant  oc- 
cupations to  mitigate  the  tedium  of  a  life  without 
drunkenness,  indigestion,  and  sleeplessness.  Among 
them  he  gives  first  place  to  conversation  in  clubs 
and  other  like  amusements. 

As  to  the  charge  that  old  age  is  not  far  from  death , 
Cicero  has,  of  course,  many  very  interesting  ob- 
servations. One  of  his  rejoinders,  that  death  is 
even  more  common  in  youth,  will  not  bear  statisti- 
cal analysis.  But  that  death  in  youth  is  a  sort  of 
violence,  while  death  in  old  age  is  spontaneous, 
without  force,  natural,  is  a  forecast  of  Metchni- 
koff's  demonstration   that  all  infectious  disease  is 


218  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

violent  death  as  truly  as  if  by  an  external  cause. 
Young  men,  says  Cicero,  seem  to  me  to  die  just  as 
when  the  violence  of  flame  is  extinguished  by  a 
flood  of  water;  whereas  old  men  die  as  the  ex- 
hausted fire  goes  out.  As  fruits  when  they  are 
green  are  plucked  by  force  from  the  trees,  but  when 
ripe  and  mellow  drop  off,  so  violence  takes  away 
their  lives  from  youths,  but  maturity  from  old 
men,  a  state  which  to  me  indeed  is  so  delightful  that 
as  I  approach  death  I  seem,  as  it  were,  to  be  getting 
sight  of  land,  and  at  length  after  a  long  voyage  to 
be  just  coming  into  harbor. 

One  saying  more  I  must  quote  from  De  Senectute, 
for  it  might  have  served  for  our  text : 

In  my  whole  discourse  remember  that  I  am 
praising  that  old  age  which  is  established  on 
the  foundations  of  youth.  Neither  gray  hairs 
nor  wrinkles  can  suddenly  catch  respect,  but 
the  former  part  of  life  honorably  spent  reaps 
the  fruits  of  authority  at  the  close. 

Cicero's  philosophy  on  this  subject  may  be  our 
philosophy  in  part,  but  his  religion  is  not  our  re- 
ligion, and  his  economics  are  not  our  economics. 
A  Christian  poet,  interpreting  a  Jewish  scholar  of 
the  middle  ages,  retains  this  same  philosophy  of  the 
normal  life  of  man,  while  giving  it  a  new  aspect — 
the  religious  faith  of  modern  life.  Recall  some 
fragments  of  Browning's  version  of  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra's  thoughts  on  old  age  and  death : 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  219 

Grow  old  along  with  me! 

The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made: 

Our  times  are  in  His  hand 

Who  saith,  "A  whole  I  planned, 

Youth  shows  but  half;    trust  God:    see  all,  nor  be  afraid!" 


As  it  was  better,  youth 

Should  strive,  through  acts  uncouth, 

Toward  making,  than  repose  on  aught  found  made! 

So,  better,  age,  exempt 

From  strife,  should  know,  than  tempt 

Further.     Thou   waitedst  age:    wait   death   nor  be  afraid! 


Not  on  the  vulgar  mass 

Called  "work,"  must  sentence  pass, 

Things  done,  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price; 

O'er  which,  from  level  stand, 

The  low  world  laid  its  hand, 

Found  straightway  to  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice: 

But  all  the  world's  coarse  thumb 

And  finger  failed  to  plumb, 

So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account; 

All  instincts  immature, 

All  purposes  unsure, 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled  the  man's  amount; 

Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 

Into  a  narrow  act, 

Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped; 

All  I  could  never  be, 

All  men  ignored  in  me, 

This  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher  shaped. 

This  reflection  that  we  are  to  be  valued  by  our 
ideals  and  not  by  our  acts  is  one  which  is  peculiarly 
appropriate  to  old  age,  taking  rest  for  a  moment 
ere  the  valiant  soul  be  gone  once  more  on  an  ad- 
venture brave  and  true;   and  there  we  might  leave 


220  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

the  matter  as  the  end  of  our  attempt  to  follow 
through  the  normal  life  of  man.  But  economist 
and  pragmatist  would  have  cause  for  complaint 
if  we  were  to  do  so. 

Socially,  acts  are  worth,  not  what  the  doer 
hopes,  but  what  difference  his  actions  make  in  the 
lives  of  men.  We  are  concerned,  as  we  agreed  at  the 
beginning,  in  a  sober,  matter-of-fact  consideration 
of  the  serious  social  problems  of  life's  succeeding 
stages,  and  our  last  word  therefore  must  be  not 
of  the  triumph  of  normal  life  over  death  in  the  man 
who  has  achieved  and  won  even  his  last  great  fight, 
but  a  word  of  sober,  unimpassioned,  matter-of-fact 
remembrance:  of  the  babies  that  die  for  want  of 
nourishment  and  enlightened  care;  of  the  children 
who  are  not  leading  normal  lives  in  that  they  are 
handicapped  by  tainted  blood,  by  the  drunken- 
ness and  sensuality,  or  by  the  lack  of  thrift  and 
efficiency,  of  their  elders;  of  the  older  youth  whose 
amusements  are  craps  and  petty  larceny,  un- 
guarded dance  halls,  and  uncensored  "movies," 
or  who  have  little  leisure  even  for  vicious  amuse- 
ments, because  they  are  worked  and  overworked 
until  they  are  robbed  of  their  youth;  of  the  adult 
men  and  women  who  have  missed  the  normal  way, 
through  their  fault  or  ours,  through  defective  per- 
sonality or  lack  of  opportunity,  through  bad  in- 
dustrial relations  leading  possibly  to  a  disastrous 
conflict  or  to  disastrous  litigation,  through  the  long 
persistent  consequences  of  slavery,  or  the  quick- 


LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE  221 

coming  consequences  of  war,  through  dislocations 
in  industry  or  delayed  social  adjustment;  of  the 
childless  and  friendless  old  men  and  women,  bat- 
tered wrecks  of  life,  surviving  through  all  the  years 
of  their  failures,  or  it  may  be  pushed  down  tragic- 
wise  at  the  end  after  having  known  prosperity  and 
a  measure  of  success  and  usefulness. 

If  we  accept  the  faith  that  we  build  the  social 
structure,  we  must  build  it  for  them,  the  least  of 
these  our  brethren,  or  it  will  never  stand. 

Have  ye  founded  your  thrones  and  altars,  then, 
On  the  bodies  and  souls  of  living  men? 
And  think  ye  that  building  shall  endure, 
Which  shelters  the  noble  and  crushes  the  poor? 


God  has  plans  man  must  not  spoil, 
Some  were  made  to  starve  and  toil, 
Some  to  share  the  wine  and  oil, 

We  are  told: 
Devil's  theories  are  these, 
Stifling  hope  and  love  and  peace, 
Framed  your  hideous  lusts  to  please, 

Hunger  and  cold. 

So  said  Lowell  in  two  of  his  short  poems  seventy 
years  ago,  and  so  may  we  say.  We  need  accept 
no  scheme  for  exploiting  the  weaknesses  and  dis- 
abilities of  some  that  others  may  ripen  into  luxury 
and  privilege.  Those  are  devil's  theories  wherever 
they  are  spoken. 

Neither  superman  nor  subman  can  lead  the  social 

life;   for  the  one  is  an  exploiter,  and  it  is  a  devil's 

theory  that  would  enthrone  him,  while  the  other  is 

a  constant  temptation  to  the  exploiting  and  tyran- 
ts 


222  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

nical  beast  that  slumbers  ever  in  the  breast  of 
every  ordinary  man,  to  be  aroused  by  superior 
position  or  special  privilege  or  luck.  The  strong 
man,  socialized,  has  cast  out  the  beast,  has  felt 
the  pleasure  of  helping  men  and  learned  how  to  do 
it.  He  does  not  despise  his  fellows,  but  is  their 
fellow  in  spirit,  in  privileges,  in  aspirations,  in  a 
common  lot.  The  Father  of  men,  the  Son  of  Man, 
the  brooding  spirit  of  mankind,  has  need  for  strong 
men  among  the  sons  of  men  to  bear  their  burdens 
and  to  lighten  them,  to  build  more  justly  and  firmly 
the  structure  of  our  common  lives. 


APPENDIX 


SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

The  following  questions  were  prepared  for  a 
class  held  in  Baltimore  in  connection  with  the  lec- 
ture course.  They  may  be  suggestive  for  local 
study  of  the  social  conditions  and  social  provisions 
essential  to  securing  a  normal  life  in  any  commu- 
nity. 

I.  INFANCY 

1.  a.   How  many  feeble-minded  persons  are  there  in   your 

community? 

b.  How  many  of  them  are  in  institutions? 

c.  How  are  the  others  taken  care  of? 

2.  What  percentage  of  the  births  are  registered? 

3.  a.   Is  the  infant  mortality  rate  increasing  or  decreasing? 

b.  How  many  deaths  under  one  year  of  age  have  there 

been,  year  by  year,  in  the  last  ten  years,  among 
white  babies  and  among  Negroes? 

c.  What  were  the  principal  causes  of  infant  deaths  in 

the  last  calendar  year? 

4.  How  many  illegitimate  births  were  there  last  year  among 

whites  and  among  Negroes? 

5.  a.  What  proportion  of  the  married  women  work  for  wages? 

b.  What  occupations  are  they  in? 

c.  Which  of  these  occupations,  if  any,  are  probably  in- 

jurious to  the  women  or  to  their  babies? 

6.  a.  What  are  the  "reportable"  diseases? 

b.  How  many  cases  of  each  were  reported  last  year? 

c.  What  provision  is  there  for  the  free  treatment  of  these 

diseases  in  hospitals  and  in  dispensaries? 
225 


226  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

7.  What  organizations  definitely  provide  pre-natal  instruc- 

tion?    How  many  mothers  were  supervised  by  them 
last  year? 

8.  On  what  conditions  does  a  midwife  secure  a  license? 

9.  How  is  the  city  milk  supply  supervised? 

10.  How  many  day  nurseries  accept  young  babies? 

IL  CHILDHOOD 

1.  a.   What  does  "society"  (i.e.  the  state  or  local  govern- 

ment, or  voluntary  organizations)  do  for  the  welfare 
of  the  child  from  two  to  ten  years  of  age? 
b.  What  difference  is  there,  if  any,  between  the  oppor- 
tunities provided  for  the  Negro  child,  the  child  of 
immigrant  parents,  and  the  native  white  child  of 
native  parents? 

2.  a.  What  salaries  do  teachers  in  the  elementary  grades  in 

the  public  schools  receive? 
b.  Is  the  compensation  sufficient  to  attract  competent 
teachers  and  to  retain  them? 

3.  What  are  the  most  important  things  for  the  public  schools 

to  do  next,  in  the  interest  of  young  children? 

4.  What  are  the  favorite  forms  of  recreation  among  the  chil- 

dren? 

5.  To  what  extent  are  the  recommendations  of  the  White 

House  Conference  on  the  Care  of  Dependent  Chil- 
dren (1909)  in  force  in  your  community? 


m.  YOUTH 

1.  What  are  the  popular  forms  of  recreation  among  boys  and 

girls  between  the  ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty? 

2.  Which  of  these  are  wholesome  and  which  have  undesir- 

able features? 

3.  What  proportion  of  the  boys  and  girls  of  fourteen  and 

fifteen  attend  school? 

4.  How  many  of  them  are  at  work,  instead  of  in  school? 

What  do  they  do? 


APPENDIX  227 

5.  How   many  children   under   fourteen   work   for   wages? 

Why  are  there  any?  At  what  occupations  do  they 
work? 

6.  What  facilities  are  there  for  assisting  children  to  find  suit- 

able work  on  leaving  school? 

7.  What  additional  facilities  should  be  provided? 

8.  What  desirable  occupations  are  open  to  boys  and  girls  of 

sixteen  or  seventeen? 

9.  Are  there  any  conditions  in  the  community  which  tend  to 

produce  juvenile  delinquency? 

10.  At  what  age  does  "youth"  begin?     When  does  it  end? 

IV.  MATURITY:  WORK 

1.  Make  a  list  of  the  various  official  "registrations"  or  enu- 

merations made  in  the  community  by  federal,  city, 
county,  or  state  authorities,  giving  for  each  one: 

a.  Its  purpose; 

b.  At  what  intervals  or  on  what  occasions  it  is  made; 

c.  By  whom  it  is  made  and  what  methods  are  used; 

d.  Its  scope:    i.  e.    persons   affected  and  information  se- 

cured. 

2.  Is  there  any  existing  branch  of  the  city  government  which 

could  easily  and  naturally  undertake  the  responsibil- 
ity for  a  permanent  registration  of  the  entire  popu- 
lation? 

3.  Draw  up  a  plan  for  installing  it  and  for  keeping  it  up. 

4.  What  are  the  arguments  against  such  a  registration? 

5.  What  are  the  arguments  for  it? 

V.  MATURITY  $  HOME 

1.  Describe,  as  concretely  and  as  much  in  detail  as  possible, 

the  elements  which  compose  the  minimum  "  stand- 
ard of  living"  in  your  community  at  the  present 
time. 

2.  a.   Make  a  list  of  all  the  influences  you  can  think  of — 

legislation,  administrative  policies,  private  associa- 
tion, philanthropic  effort,  or  unconscious  forces— 
which  are  operating  to  raise  this  standard  of  living. 


228  THE  NORMAL  LIFE 

b.  What  influences,  on  the  other  hand,  are  operating  to 
lower  it? 

3.  How  many  arrests  were  made  last  year  for  drunkenness? 

What  treatment  followed  the  arrests? 

4.  How  many  men  25  to  45  years  of  age  died  last  year? 

How  many  women? 

5.  What  were  the  diseases  which  caused  these  deaths,  in 

order  of  their  numerical  importance? 

VL  LATE  MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

1.  Make  a  list  of  the  five  leading  representatives  of  each 

important  occupation  in  your  community,  with  the 
approximate  age  of  each. 

2.  a.   In  which  occupations  does  an  employee  become  "too 

old"  at  forty? 
b.  What  is  the  explanation  in  each  case? 

3.  What  influences  are  at  work  to  lengthen  the  working  life? 

4.  a.  How  many  aged  dependents  are  there  in  your  com- 

munity? 

b.  How  are  they  cared  for? 

c.  Which  method  seems  to  be  the  most  satisfactory? 

5.  What  evidences  can  you  find  that  thrift  is  (a)  increasing 

or  (b)  decreasing  in  the  community? 

6.  What  influences  in  the  community  are  favorable  to  family 

solidarity?     What  influences,  on  the  contrary,  are 
actively  unfavorable? 

7.  Make  a  list  of  the  gainful  occupations  in  the  community 

which  are  open  to  persons  over  fifty  years  of  age? 

8.  a.   What  are  the  favorite  forms  of  recreation  among  old 

persons? 
b.  Is  there  any  need  of  community  interest  in  this  ques- 
tion? 

9.  Which  of  the  diseases  of  old  age  are  the  most  serious  from 

a  social  point  of  view? 

10.  Prepare  a  brief  in  support  of  the  thesis  that  a  man's  life 
may  be  judged  by  the  progress  made  towards  as- 
suring a  normal  life  for  every  citizen  of  the  com- 
munity in  which  he  has  lived. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abnormal      tendencies       in 

youth,  77 
Abnormalities,  10,  220 
Accidents,  141,  189 
Adaptability,  education  for, 

93 

Adler,  Felix,  89 

Adolescence.     See  Youth 

Adult  population  of  the  Uni- 
ted States,  120 

Alcoholism,  169 

Allen,  Nathan,  178 

Ante-natal  life  and  care,  23 


Barr,  Martin  W.,  106 

Berger,  Victor  L.,  207 

Birth,  28 

Birth-rate,  39,  42 

Births,  registration  of,  30 

Browning,    Robert:       Rabbi 

Ben  Ezra,  219 
Budin  Foundation,  27 
Burns,  John,  35 


Character,  formation   of,  77; 

inherited  and  acquired,  113 
Childhood,  43-74 
Child-labor,  30,  78,  83,  87 
Children's    Bureau,    25,    26, 

27,  36,  90 
Cicero:    De  Senectute,  216 
Civic  nurture,  56 


Compensation  for  accidents, 

114,  189 
Congenital  diseases,  24,  34 
Cottage  system,  64,  70 
Courts,  176 

Crime,  173;  prevention  of,  52 
Criminal  procedure,  175 
Curriculum,  54 


Day  nurseries,  35 
Defectives,  18,  20 
Degenerative  diseases,  181 
Delinquency,   juvenile,    107; 

statistics  of,  112 
Dental  clinics,  102 
Dependence  in  old  age,  206 
Dependent  children,  62 
De  Quiros,  C.  Bernaldo,  174 
Desertion,  185 
Disease,  176;   prevention  of, 

52 
Divorce,  185 


Economic  judgments,  50 
Education,  47,  77 
Efficiency,  54,  93 
Employment,  126 


Family,  212.     See  also  Home 
Fatigue,  144 


232 


INDEX 


Feeble-minded.      See  Defec- 
tives; Mental  Defect 
Fernald,  Walter  E.,  106 
Finances  of  institutions,  68 
Fisher,  Irving,  182 
Foster  homes,  71 
Foundlings,  39 


Habits,  50 

Hamilton,  Alice,  41 

Health,  102.  See  also  Dis- 
ease; Physical  Defects 

Health,  Department  of,  19, 
26,  28,  31,  33,  38,  183,  184 

Health  ideal,  104 

Heredity,  18,  47 

Hine,  Lewis  W.,  87 

Home,  37,  45,  153-192;  life, 
165;  manufacture,i45 

Housing,  164 

Hutchins  and  Harrison:  His- 
tory of  Factory  Legisla- 
tion, 83 

Hygiene,  49 


Illegitimacy,  20,  21,  25 

Illiteracy,  81 

Immigration,  120 

Income,  use  of,  159 

Industrial  relations,  150 

Infancy,  13-42 

Infant  mortality,  32,  36 

Insanity,  177 

Institutions  for  aged,  208; 
for  children,  63,  70;  for 
children,  advantages  of,  72 

Insurance.  See  Social  In- 
surance 

Intemperance,  169 


James,  William,  5 


Lane,  Winthrop  D.,  98 
Life  Extension  Institute,  182 
Lindsay,  Samuel  McCune,  90 
Lindsey,  Ben  B.,  107 
Lovejoy,  Owen  R.,  90 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  221 

Marriage,  19,  155 

Massachusetts  Commission 
on  Old  Age  Pensions,  212, 
214 

Maturity,  115-204;    full,  195 

Medical  education,  38;  in- 
spection of  school  chil- 
dren, 52 

Mental  defect,  18,  20,  105, 
109 

Metchnikoff,  Elie,  217 

Mid  wives,  28 

Minimum  wage,  147 

National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee, 83,  89 

New  York  City,  24,  28,  31, 
32,  33.  59.  60,  66,  102 

Newsholme,  Sir  Arthur,  23, 

30,41 
New  Zealand  Society  for  the 

Health     of     Women     and 

Children,  27,  32 
Normal  life  of  man,  divisions 

of,  15,  117 

Old  age,  205-222;    pensions, 

213 
Orphans,  63 
Over-population,"  41 
Over- work,  143 
Owen,  Robert,  85 


Palmer-Owen  bill,  90,  172 
Parentage,  17,  22 


INDEX 


233 


Pearse,  Carroll  Gardner,  ioo 
Pensions,  Federal  and  state, 

208;    for  old  age,  213;    for 

widows,  73,  189 
Physical  defects,  52 
Play  and  recreation,  61,  104 
Police,  in,  175 
Poverty,  prevention  of,  51 
Pre-natal.     See  Ante-natal 
Prisons,  176 
Probation,  no 


Race  suicide,  40 
Recreation.     See  Play 
Registration  of  births,  30;   of 

population,  58,  122 
Rubinow,  I.  M.,  214 


Sanitary  conditions,  144 
Schneider,  Herman,  101 
School,  46;     attendance,  78; 
buildings,    58;        Inquiry, 
Committee  on,  New  York 
City,  59;   reasons  for  leav- 
ing, 91 
Seasonal  trades,  135 
Sex  hygiene,  53 
Shaw,  Bernard,  7 
Sickness  insurance,  183 
Social  construction,  5;    edu- 
cation,  conditions   of,    57; 
insurance,  73,  189,  213 
Squier,  Lee  W.,  207 
Standard  of  living,  36,  156 
Still-births,  24 


Subsidy  system  in  children's 
institutions,  69 


Thomson,  J.  Arthur,  47 
Thrift,  209,  211 
Todd,  Helen  M.,  92 
Town-planning,  162 
Tracy,  Roger  S.,  87 
Tuberculosis,  180 

Unemployable,  130 
Unemployed,  128 
Unemployment,     causes    of, 

130;      remedies    for,    132; 

responsibility    of    industry 

for,  138 
Ungraded  classes,  60 

Van  Kleeck,  Mary,  97 
Venereal  disease,  19 
Vocational  guidance,  94,  101 

West,  Mrs.  Max,  27 

White  House  Conference  of 

1909,  70 
Widowhood,  187 
Widow's  pensions,  73,  189 
Women,  employment  of,  26, 

34.  140 

Work,  1 26-1 5 1 

Working  day,  142;    life,  pro- 
longation of,  199 

Youth,  75-114 


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